Grayling college faces flood of fake applications as direct action intensifies
By Ian DuntFollow @IanDunt
Professor AC Grayling's plans for a new private college faced new hurdles today after student' organised to deluge the institution with fake submissions.
A Facebook page set up by Oxford students Rachel Elizabeth Fraser and Eloise Stonborough urges activists to send in fake applications to the private college, which plans to charge students £18,000 in tuition fees a year.
Professor Grayling's plans have seen him come in for enormous criticism, as students, lecturers and educational experts accuse him of helping create an separate education system for the rich.
A talk featuring Professor Grayling on Tuesday has to be called off after a smoke bomb was let off in the lecture hall while an appearance outside St Andrew's College tomorrow is expected to be disrupted by students.
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Other lecturers involved in the project, including well-respected evolutionary expert Richard Dawkins, have also been targeted in what is becoming an increasingly bitter campaign.
It is a brutal fall-from-grace for Professor Grayling, who liked to describe himself as a humanities 'pinko' and whose reputation for humanism had earned him a place as one of the most celebrated thinkers in Britain.
But his attempt to justify a college with fees twice the level of that of public universities with reference to spending cuts was met with disdain by student activists.
Over the last 48 hours, 1,500 students have signed up to a direct action campaign against the college.
"It's incredibly easy to apply for a place because it's outside UCAS, so it's a separate pool of applications," Nicki Kindersley, a PhD student at Durham University who submitted a fake for, said.
"The idea is just to bombard them," she said. "The staff are going to get deluged with applications."
The Facebook page urges people to "apply to the New College of Humanities as if you were a rich idiot.
"The application form asks how you plan on paying them £54k – tell them you plan on laying golden eggs, extorting leprechaun gold, selling the organs of small children."
