Ridiculing Peers for their Accent?

I was at Durham several years ago so may be a bit out of date, but my feelings are that either the article has massively exaggerated the scale of the problem or things have changed significantly since I left.

Some posh-sounding students acted like idiots, but for me that was always a background 'ha, there go the Hatfield college rugby team on a bar crawl, aren't they so stereotypical' kind of thing rather than anything oppressive or dominating. It actually makes me a bit nostalgic remembering the sound of posh chanting echoing through the streets late at night :o:p

There may well be some people that were targeted by bullies, but I don't think that's the experience that most people have at Durham. Looking back I'm struck by how friendly and genuine many of the people I interacted with were, and how I didn't really see any of the sort of overt bullying described in the article. There were plenty of nobs too, but I think you get them everywhere and they weren't exclusively from any particular class/location/nationality. I'm a northerner but from an independent school so maybe I'd be one of the 'posh' ones in their measure, but I had friends and acquaintances from all sorts of different backgrounds and don't remember it being a significant issue.

That being said I studied Engineering, went to one of the less traditional colleges, and engaged in less 'prestigious' sports/hobbies so I probably crossed paths with much fewer 'Hooray Henries' than some other people might have done. I think the concentration of posh tools may have been a lot higher in the arts subjects, and I guess I could imagine a seminar full of them being quite unwelcoming to a working class student with an accent. Friends I had who studied arts subjects certainly had more stories about people that sounded like walking caricatures of posh people than I had, and did find some of them unpleasant, but others pleasant, as you'd expect.

Basically I'm sure some posh people there are absolute nobs to working class northerners, but even thinking back about it I really don't feel like the stories from the article are representative of what most people will have experienced, unless it really has changed significantly in the past 5 years.
 
I think Durham Uni has far too much power in Durham now, it’s expanded massively, and turned the town center into a giant campus. I’m not ashamed of my accent and I love the North East, my family on both sides have lived here going back donkeys years.

My Granda put it best, when he said the North East is mostly ignored by the rest of the country and the powers that be, until they want some decent lads to go and fight in some crude hole abroad somewhere.
 
GreatAuk said:
I was at Durham several years ago so may be a bit out of date, but my feelings are that either the article has massively exaggerated the scale of the problem or things have changed significantly since I left.
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I think things have changed quite a bit in the last few years, Boris Johnson and the Eton set in the cabinet has probably encouraged it.

I recognise the gist of it from my time doing a PhD at Bristol. We had a lot of Oxbridge rejections in the undergraduate years and the behaviour of some of the young toffs was appalling.
 
Squidward said:
Why is this article trying vilify privately educated individuals? Ultimately the behaviour is not acceptable, people can be cruel in general. To focus purely on privately educated people is not fair and just seems like an easy target.

I can only imagine the ridicule if these privately educated individuals were to complain about bullying and being called "posh" for simply talking properly.
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I don't think that the article vilifies privately educated individuals, in fact I don't think that it mentions them at all?

What is beyond question is that many Public Schools see getting their students into Oxbridge as being important in terms of their reputation; Durham is seen as being a "runner-up" destination.

Inevitably this will have an impact on privately educated Henrys and Henriettas who fail to get into Oxbridge and who end up at Durham; they will see themselves as failures and will want to assert their "superiority" over people who were educated in Northern England - frankly they would be better off at Sussex or Bath where their mediocrity will be less obvious ;)
 
It definitely happens in less explicit ways throughout most business and educational settings.

I've either been involved in, or witness to, many occasions where the person with the typical Southern, neutral accent has bad more weight put on their idea or opinion than someone with a regional accent.

It works both ways though and I think most of us have an inherent bias towards people who sound similar, it's just that the toffs seem to have really nailed the elitist and condescending tone.
 
DanTheMan said:
It definitely happens in less explicit ways throughout most business and educational settings.

I've either been involved in, or witness to, many occasions where the person with the typical Southern, neutral accent has bad more weight put on their idea or opinion than someone with a regional accent.

It works both ways though and I think most of us have an inherent bias towards people who sound similar, it's just that the toffs seem to have really nailed the elitist and condescending tone.
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A senior (and very good) analyst that I used to work with on projects, despite regularly predicting and constructively highlighting future issues to the London-based team we were working with at the time (at one of the banks HQ in Bishopsgate), was very rarely listened to. He had a broad Black Country accent (similar to Brum) and in a moment of desperation he once turned to me and asked "why is no-one listening to me, can they understand me? Is it my accent?".

Issues he'd tried to raise would constantly rear their heads further down the line - some of them showstoppers. It used to drive him up the wall.
 
LOL I'm quite glad I grew up in the midlands and have a fairly neutral accent.

University student ambassador Jack Lines also reported being belittled. “On a night out, I was approached by a female student who said that she would sleep with me as she had a ‘poverty fetish’, and asked me to start a fight to impress her as ‘that’s what you people do, you fight whenever you get drunk,’” he said.
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I'm sure Jack will be traumatised for life because some posh bird wanted a bit of rough and took the **** while chatting to him.... seriously, these people need to grow some thicker skin. Not condoning whatever happened to the girl who was actually bullied and ended up going home btw... but that guy moaning about someone mocking him a bit on a night out is just ridiculous.

As if the reverse doesn't happen either - the elite private school/home counties types who don't get into Oxbridge and or don't go for the usual second choice of Edinburgh, St Andrews or Durham can easily end up with their background/accent being a source of humour at say a good London uni or a good red brick in the Midlands or up north.

It's hardly confined to accents either - subject choices, whether you go to the proper uni or the former poly etc... etc...

As for sports teams wanting to ride a bunch of locals - so what?
 
Ryan-3 said:
Yes, I understand many will instantly be anti-Guardian, calling it a "Corbynista/Lefty (can't say this word) nonsense" story, but hear me out... As somebody who attends this university, I can certainly say that I have seen this sort of behaviour with my own eyes in my short time here even though I don't have to deal with many undergraduate students.
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Yes, it's not nice. But it's simply because she's different. Not 'one of us', as Thatcher used to say. You try having a plummy English accent in the villages and towns of northern England or - worse - Scotland.
 
I've lived in Durham for going on 20 years. It's true to say that the city is like one huge campus now; students everywhere, new uni buildings popping up all over the place as well as old ones being bought up and turned into student accommodation.

On another note, I used to thoroughly enjoy going for nights out to the bars / clubs with my "rough" northern friends; especially during Freshers week. Our specific intent being to bang as many posh uni birds as possible. Ah, happy times.
 
R.P.L said:
People gonna people.
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Exactly. I've been ridiculed for my SE accent because I moved northwards and all sorts of unpleasant assumptions have been made. There's the "not like us" mentality all over the place in all directions. Not everyone. Not most people. But enough of them to be an annoyance.
 
Amplus said:
Off topic and maybe could start a new thread, however has anybody had much luck in getting rid of or reducing there accent?
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I used to share a house with someone from Derry. We thought he still had a very strong Northern Irish accent. When he went home, people said he'd acquired an English accent. Reducing an accent probably isn't a great idea unless you're staying in one place.
 
Is it really a big deal...there are two camps for every situation huh? be the victim or be in control of the situation and stand up for yourself...the only deterant I can think of is getting a bruise on your face.
 
Amplus said:
The older I get the less Im bothered. 2 years ago I actually paid for elocution lessons to try and soften my accent. Didn't work for me so slowly accepting it. My wife is very well spoken and considered very posh so if we have kids definitely don't want them to have my accent.
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The same Glaswegian chap I mentioned earlier in the thread has a relatively posh Surrey ex wife and they've got a small boy together. The poor boy has been struggling to speak properly because on one hand he has his mum speaking with the local accent, and his father doing completely the opposite and saying things he can't even begin to comprehend.
 
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