Head of Sport Imperial resigns

Grant Danskine, Head of Sport Imperial, has resigned amidst resurfaced criticism of the organisation’s treatment of female athletes. Although the criticism – which resurfaced after Imperial published its institutional culture report – is unrelated to Danskine’s direction of Sport Imperial, it did manage to receive national coverage once more.

The incident refers to the sexist mistreatment of the Women’s Rugby during the 2015 Varsity. Sport Imperial failed to provide adequate transport and changing facilities to the women’s rubgy teams despite the fact they were headlining. The players were also left without food, stranded without transportation and called “fat girls” by management.

Earlier this academic year, Sport Imperial also came under fire for running a sexist ‘Imperial Girls Can’ campaign. The campaign was meant to encourage sport participation amongst women at Imperial, but managed to offend several students after calling on them to “bounce the calories away”.

Danskine’s resignation came as a surprise to many Union staff members and students even though a College spokesperson said it was submitted in December. For quite some time, the Sport Imperial website listed Danskine as “Acting Head of Sport Imperial”, with some sources telling felix he was on indefinite leave. It was only on Wednesday that the position was officially shown to be “vacant” online.

A College spokesperson told felix that “Imperial is currently recruiting for a new Head of Sport, following the resignation of the previous postholder in December. The College is working closely with Imperial College Union on the recruitment process.”

No information was released to us regarding the circumstances of Danskine’s sudden resignation, though.

Next week Sport Imperial and the Union will be sending out a survey to students asking them for input on the sport services offered by College.