UCL student writes open letter calling for a no detriment policy

Use the email template to ask the provost to reinstate the no detriment policy


UCL Student Dom Borghino has written an open letter for students to send to the provost to lobby UCL to reinstate the no detriment policy.

The need for a no detriment policy has become overwhelmingly apparent after the government placed the country in another lockdown, which for many university students will be the third lockdown they have been subject to during their degree.

Students have been left feeling unsupported by both the government and the universities themselves. And so, in this time of crisis the need reinstate academic safety nets and no detriment policies is more pressing that ever.

The letter itself asks universities to reconsider the no detriment policy because:

“Last year’s No-Detriment Policy can be said to have been invoked for two main reasons: first, to compensate for the weeks of teaching that had been affected by the lockdown in March and the early finishing of classes; and second, to mitigate the troubles faced by students when undergoing unfamiliar “alternative assessments”. Both of these reasons are still relevant this year as well: though no teaching weeks have so far been cancelled this year, the move to online teaching has meant that every week since Term 1 began has been severely affected by the pandemic, regardless of the significant efforts made by staff in all departments to make virtual classes as effective as possible; and despite this being the second year where alternative assessments are substituting exams, they can hardly be considered any more familiar to either the students undergoing them nor the staff devising them than they were last year”

For more details on the letter check out @domlzz’s story on Instagram.

Instructions on how to send the letter can be found below.

Copy + Paste the below text to an email addressed to the head of your institution (eg. Provost, Head of a Department, Headmaster, Dean of a college, etc), and don’t forget to alter the [ BRACKETED ] text.

MAKE SURE TO READ THE WHOLE TEXT – be sure you’re happy to sign off on what’s written and that it accurately applies to you, and remember to edit all the [ BRACKETED ] text before you send. Feel free to alter any aspect if you see fit, this is merely a template to use as you wish.

MAKE SURE TO SIGN OFF WITH YOUR FULL NAME AND STUDENT ID

UCL PROVOST’S EMAIL ADDRESS(es):

[email protected]

[email protected] 

The letter is attached here.