‘The Christian Union should be banned from having a freshers’ stand.’
This was the unilateral announcement last October (2017) of two rogue members of Oxford’s Balliol College Junior Common Room Committee. This was to make the Balliol freshers’ fair a ‘safe, secular space’. This decision was subsequently overturned by an irate student body, but the incident caught the attention of the national media.
Upholding basic freedoms
A few weeks later, Universities Minister Jo Johnson (himself an alumnus of Balliol) drew attention to the newly formed Office for Students (OfS). He announced that the OfS will investigate Student Unions (SUs) and others who silence freedom of speech in the name of ‘safe spaces’ and promised that the OfS will hold universities to account if they do not uphold such basic freedoms.
