Eight of our BME student societies have made a joint submission to the University of their Statement of Solidarity & Call to Action to the University of Kent on institutional racism and the University’s need to take action.

Following on from our joint statement on racism with Kent Union, the University welcomes this submission and is committed to working through the issues raised. We have had conversations with groups of students over the last few weeks and will be continuing these. We are also inviting representatives of the societies named in the statement to meet with senior colleagues and the submission will be part of a discussion on our response to institutional racism at the next meeting of our senior management team, the Executive Group.

Many of our staff and students are actively working to address institutional racism and, following recent online forums, we have already begun additional work on a number of issues raised by members of the University. However, we recognise we have much to do to address these issues through our actions, training, education and through appropriate policies and procedures and we are committed to progressing these in partnership with our students and staff.