Leeds Freestyle tells students to come to a social dressed as chavs from St. Trinian’s

The society has since cancelled tonight’s event and sincerely apologised


Leeds Freestyle Dance Society has told its second year students to come dressed as “chavs” for their social tonight.

In a since-deleted Instagram post, the society was planning to host a St Trinian’s themed social at their social sec’s house with prizes for the best dressed.  Freshers were told to dress up as “Nerds”, second years as “Chavs” and third years as “Posh Totties”; clique names taken from the 2007 film.

The society has now cancelled the event and apologised saying it did not understand ‘the weight of the theme’ and acknowledging that they made an honest mistake.

The theme was initially promoted on their social media pages on Tuesday afternoon at 3.40pm. An hour later, the society edited its post and denied it was a “chav themed social”, stating they were “simply imitating the outfits in St Trinian’s”. At 5.30pm, the post was deleted.

The original post caption read: “This week’s social theme is St Trinian’s! We’re having pre-drinks at […] (DM for the address) and then heading to Mischief after. We only have a limited amount of tickets so will be giving priority to those who didn’t get in last week.

“We will be giving out prizes for the best dressed so try your hardest! We can’t wait to see you there!”

@leedsfreestyledance has since deleted the post

A disclaimer at the bottom of the post read: “Just to clarify that this is not a chav themed social and we do not mean any offence by this outdated term. We are simply imitating the outfits in St Trinian’s which have been labelled by them as a ‘chav clique’.”

The president of Leeds Freestyle Dance told The Leeds Tab: “We would like to clear up this situation and state that this social is no longer happening. The issue has been raised and brought to our attention and we apologise for any offence we have caused.

“We as a society stand for inclusivity as we always have done and in no way want to make anyone feel that we are being inappropriate at all.

“As a society, each week we dress in different costumes and we chose the theme of St Trinians and adopted the term ‘Chav Clique’ from what is used in the movie. We did not realise the weight of this theme and we apologise for the offence we caused.

“We will continue to support members and promote wellbeing as we always have done and are dealing with the misunderstanding.”

Leeds University Union and Leeds University have been approached for comment.

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