Oliver Sturdy tells us his reaction to the University of Kent's consultation outcomes

Transcript

00:00 We're very, very sad about it. And that's the feeling that I share with all of my other, you know, all of the other students from my course.

00:08 It's devastating to see a department which has been so successful for, I think, about 60 years,

00:14 just shut down without seemingly without much consideration.

00:18 Since the news came out, I mean, it's been well over a month now.

00:23 There's been definitely a bad atmosphere on campus, particularly with the students who are in those courses affected.

00:31 That I've noticed today has definitely dropped hugely.

00:35 I've been on campus all day talking to people and people are upset and people are worried as well.

00:40 People are really, really worried. And like we were saying earlier, the stage one students, a lot of them are thinking about jumping ship.

00:47 You know, it's this isn't a nice position to be in for the students either.

00:51 The level of transparency they've been given us is by no means transparent at all, really.

00:58 We felt like the financial situation hadn't been made completely clear.

01:02 The consultation period, I mean, on the lecturer side of things, there wasn't much information given to the lecturers.

01:11 And the actual plans themselves seemed also almost like smoke and mirrors in a way.

01:19 From the like an anthropology student point of view, this is a very, very devastating.

01:26 It's very devastating news. All of us love this course so much.

01:30 We love our lecturers so much. And we recognise the importance of this course in particular in the country.

01:37 It's one of the only places where they like where they can combine environmental sciences and social sciences.

01:44 And to take away a huge part of that of that social sciences is it's appalling and it's very, very misguided.