Shutdown!

Kingston University Students' Union (KUSU) shut down the Christian Union's first major religious talk just one day before it was to be to be held.

The talk was cancelled following a misunderstanding between KUSU and KUCU, as to who was granted permission onto the university site. Hearsay that news of this 'public meeting' had leaked into the community led the university's health and safety advisers to draw up a risk assessment.

With 'public meeting' advertised on thousands of flyers, and accessible on KUCU's external website, it meant that KUSU: “can't take the risk because we don't know who's seen it. We can't control whose coming,” said Michelle Thorpe, Student Activities Coordinator. “It wasn't stated straight away that it was a public meeting – an oversight on my part.”

The assessment outlined that with no differentiation between students and outside guests, students would be at risk if trouble was to arise from “animated disagreements with the speaker”, Jay Smith, an expert in Islamic studies, which could only be countered with “16 security trained staff.”

It was these concerns that led for KUSU to cancel the event 30 hours before the meeting was to be held.

Helen Sheridan, who is heavily involved in student work for Fairfield Church, and a former engineering student at Kingston University said:“Everything is shut down with a bit of scaremongering. The consequence of not allowing this event to go ahead is effectively shutting down freedom of speech. It's subtle and people are not noticing it.”

This is now the second time Fairfield Church of Kingston have been stopped in hosting this event. An attempt earlier this year, under the title: What would Jesus say to Muhammad?, was ruined by fear that the debate would become volatile, causing the venue to pull the plug days before it was due to go ahead.

Helen said: “[It feels like] we can't get a venue that is prepared to deal with a topic like this.”
KUCU does have KUSU's support to hold this talk later this year. Suggestions to handle this scale of event are currently being discussed and a 'guest list only' measure could potentially be used to control numbers.

Michelle said: “From the content point of view there is no problem whatsoever. We want you to have and hold big events...We want our students to debate. We promote freedom of speech.”
She added that in this instance: “We had to make a decision and we needed to make it quickly.”