RAG mag battle reaches national newspapers

This week, national newspapers covered the sexism row that has been raging since the union strongly advised RAG to bin 1600 copies of a satirical magazine they’d just printed. In an attempt to raise money for Great Ormond Street Hospital, the British Refugee Council and Porridge in Rice, which works in Kenya, RAG published a 16-page handout that included several pages of ‘satire’, which the union has branded a sexist example of “harassment and bullying” against the Union President. After last Friday’s FELIX, which published comment pieces responding to the story, journalists from the Daily Mail and Evening Standard began to contact members of the RAG committee, the Union President and College.

The news story made page ten of Tuesday’s Evening Standard along with an image of the union president Photoshopped over the business school. The piece was mostly a rehash of FELIX content, with an additional comment from the union’s interim Managing Director, who said the union had “responded to students’ concerns about the magazine and RAG had apologised”. A short Editorial Comment piece on the incident featured on page 14 of the daily newspaper, calling it a “small but dispiriting example of the creeping censorship at universities”.

The piece went online on Tuesday morning, and remained on the front page of the Evening Standard’s website for several hours.

As the Evening Standard story broke, the president’s personal Twitter account became private.

Later that day a similar story appeared on the Daily Mail’s website. This longer article included multiple references to Lucinda’s comment piece in last week’s FELIX, in which she claimed that she had been the victim of “trollish stereotyping and personal attacks” and that the union’s actions were “in no way preventing RAG from raising money”.

Lower down in the piece, which swings in no particular direction in support, it’s mentioned that IC FemSoc said they hadn’t thought the piece was sexist.

The article also links to an Imgur upload of the RAG article itself, which FELIX has been unable to print.

In the article’s comment section, notorious on MailOnline for being a source of bizarre views, one reader remarked: “These students’ antics are just juvenile! Do we need reports of them in an adult newspaper?”

In this week’s FELIX, several notable RAG members wrote in, complaining about the union’s treatment of this year’s committee. In a letter addressed to the union’s President, RAG’s Vice Chair of Activities said: “Calling the piece sexist undermines genuine sexism” and that she hoped “you realise that because of this dispute, a lot of charity money was lost”.

Lucinda told us: “I set out my views on the trollish behaviour in my FELIX article, and I’m grateful for the backing I’ve received from men and women leaders since that time.”