Names of female presidents at Cambridge Uni society vandalised during Women’s History Month

The names of all the female presidents at a Cambridge University college society have been scratched out following the start of Women’s History Month.

On Monday 2nd March, the names of Fee Robinson and Olivia Sally, current and former presidents of King’s College Graduate Union, were defaced with aggressive scratch marks.

The names of former male presidents were left untouched.

Olivia addressed the incident on a group chat, reassuring the college’s graduate cohort: “Women — including women of colour and trans women — and non-binary people have always belonged at King’s — and always will.”

In a statement to The Cambridge Tab, she said: “Condemnation is easy. For a college like King’s, it’s also not enough.

“King’s is led almost entirely by women — the Provost, the Senior Tutor, and the President of the Graduate Union. I am the first woman of colour to hold this position. None of that happened by accident. But what does it mean when the names of those women can be scratched from the record — on the first day of Women’s History Month — and the first instinct is to repair the board, not to ask why it happened?

“It means we’ve inherited a progressive reputation and not always done the work to interrogate it in real time. We cannot simply fix the board and call it finished. Restoration isn’t reckoning. But if any college can do the harder work, it’s King’s. And we have no excuse not to.”

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Olivia is the first woman of colour to hold the position of president and has been unapologetic in her commitment to making King’s an open and diverse space.

Fee, a former president who is now a Kennedy Scholar at Harvard Law School, said she was “saddened” by the vandalisation but remained “sure that the King’s community is as inclusive as ever and that the actions of those involved in the defacement are antithetical to the broader student body’s value”.

King’s was one of the first three Cambridge colleges to admit female students, alongside Churchill and Clare. It celebrated its 50 years of women in 2022 and is currently the only College with a female provost.

A King’s College spokesperson said: “King’s is an inclusive and welcoming community, which does not tolerate any form of discrimination. Any instances of vandalism should be reported through the usual channels so a full investigation can be undertaken in accordance with college processes.”

Cambridge University has been contacted for comment.

Featured image via Unsplash