Exeter Uni deletes mental health Insta post after students comment asking for no detriment

Exeter University removed the comments section and then deleted an Instagram post about mental health, after students commented on it about poor student mental health and the need for the ‘no detriment’ policy.

Users could initially comment on the post, however, after students began commenting about these issues, the comments section was disabled, meaning all comments were deleted and no further users had the ability to leave a comment.

The post contained the quote “Give yourself the same care and attention that you give to others and watch yourself bloom.”

The caption of the post told students “It’s okay not to be okay” and that “we have lots of tools available to help you”. The post was promoting Fika – a mental fitness app. The caption dubbed January as “our positivity month” and that the Fika app is “devoted to developing our ability to thing positively”.

Multiple users, however, took to the comments section, speaking about the lack of no-detriment policy, which was implemented for summer 2020 assessments, but has not been continued this year.

One user said: “A no detriment policy would rly help students mental health :)” with another commenting “I think we’d all be thinking more positively if we had the no detriment policy reinstated.” One student also discussed the impact of tuition fees saying: “Reducing my tuition fees would help my mental health xx”.

The post has since been deleted from the university’s Instagram account, but prior to this the comments section was disabled, meaning users couldn’t comment on the post, and all previous comments had been removed.

Students have since taken to the account’s previous post in response to the disabling of the comments section on a post about mental health. One user commented: “Imagine turning off your comments on a wellbeing post because students are pushing for something that would help their mental health💀💀💀💀”.

Another said: “Turning off comments on your mental health post is disgraceful, the students are asking for a no detriment policy and you’re not even willing to discuss the issue. ‘Mental Health Awareness’ is just a social media stunt for this account”.

A spokesperson for Exeter university said: “We have been talking to our student unions and the students who have been campaigning for a no detriment policy.

“We know it has been another difficult year for students and that is why we set out in November our policy to protect learning and academic outcomes. You can see our full and transparent approach on our website and the message we sent to students. This was a joint message with our student unions.

“We are continuing our discussions with students but the latest position is all contained within the message in the link below: https://www.exeter.ac.uk/coronavirus/communications/students19nov/.”

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