People at Birmingham are really mad about someone saying a chav social is offensive

A University of Birmingham student has been ruthlessly mocked after complaining to the Guild about an alleged chav sports night being held this coming Wednesday.

She posted in the Fab N'Fresh student Facebook group with over 22,000 members, asking for support and attaching screenshots of an email she had sent to the Guild of Students earlier that day.

The student was ridiculed by her classmates, with some describing her as "virtue signalling" and calling her "a fucking melt".

Her email centred around the perceived classism of a chav social. Calling it "blantantly classist" and "distasteful", she argued that it had the potential to make students from a lower-income background feel unwelcome.

It said:

Hi there,

I am writing to express my shock and disgust about this weeks sports night theme. The 'chav' theme is so blatantly classist and distasteful it's difficult to know even know where to begin. This 'theme' shows such a lack of judgment (sic) and thought, and an utter disregard for the backgrounds of some students – it has the potential to make students from a lower-income background, myself included, feel unwelcome and like they don't belong at this university, since the very people you are depicting and poking fun at are the ones that I have grown up around and have as friends and family.

I don't know if this where the word actually comes from, but 'chav' supposedly stands for 'council housed and violent', which not only implies that growing up/living in a council house is something to be ashamed of and made fun of, this gross stereotype also implies that all working class people are violent good-for-nothings and are certainly not involved in attaining a higher education.

The mere thought of a group of privileged, middle class kids, who have never had to worry about financial instability in their lives, never even mind even acknowledge their privilege, dress up as their less privileged counterparts for fun is frankly sickening. To me, this seems like just another example of privileged people loving so many aspects of working class culture e.g. the clothing and the music, but still internally regarding it as inferior and making a mockery of it at the first chance they get.

Reinforcement of the wholly incorrect, untrue, and disparaging stereotypes is not something that I expected at university, and I'm disappointed that I have now encountered it. This disgusting, classist caricature of working class people simply does not belong at a university where we are all supposedly held in equal esteem, or anywhere else for that matter. understand that now it is probably too late to change the theme, but I really think that in the future these things should be a lot more thought through and not make a mockery of any marginalised demographic.

Then, it all kicked off. Within an hour, hundreds of comments on the post in the group were hurling abuse at her for doing so.

The comments include several of the following, including this one calling her a "fucking dickhead".

And this, asking if she didn't have something better to do with her time.

Other people took issue with the wording of her email, arguing that her possibly conflating chavs and working class people is "more offensive than anything else".

Ellie Keiller, president of the Birmingham Guild of Students commented below the post saying: "Just to let you know, 'the Guild' doesn't set sports night themes the sport / society themselves do. We will absolutely look into this complaint though but just wanted to clear up the confusion.

"We do have a zero tolerance policy that can be found on the Guild website and that prevents people from entering the building if they breach it."