Bias Against Coloured Students

Press, Volume CIV, Issue 30768, 4 June 1965, Page 13

Bias Against Coloured Students

fSpectal Crspdt. N.Z P A.) LONDON, June 3. No more than 37 per cent of Edinburgh’s landladies who take male students are prepared to accept coloured students.

The proportion willing to accept coloured girls is slightly smaller. This is the result of a survey conducted by the accommodation department of Edinburgh University. The figures were obtained from forms issued to landladies in which they were asked whether they were prepared to accept overseas students, and if so, from which countries they preferred them. The report of the accom-

modation committee said there are fewer female overseas students than male. Coloured students have a very unequal chance in the search for Edinburgh’s scarce lodgings. About 14 per cent of the total student population at Edinburgh comes from overseas—though there are no figures showing how many are coloured. Many come from Europe and America. Some white students refuse to share rooms with coloured students, which has presented the department with further problems as many lodgings offer double rooms. It has been found, too, that most overseas students are unwilling to share rooms. In February, the Students' Council passed a motion urging the department to strike off the list of approved lodgings all landladies who were

not prepared to take coloured students. This motion, however, was later rescinded at the request of the university's overseas presidents’ committee. The committee’s president (Mr Austice Palma) said that the motion, if implemented, would do more harm than good and would alienate those landladies already biased against coloured and overseas students, possibly to the extent of antagonising those who had no such bias. The committee, which represents all foreign students’ societies in the university, has recommended that a body should be set up with representatives of the committee, the department of accommodation and possibly the social anthropology department, which landladies could approach with confidence in an attempt to solve differences

l.with coloured students which • may have resulted from cultural clashes. They have also- urged the university to undertake a comprehensive survey into the motives and reasons for refusing coloured students, , and suggested this might be i undertaken by the department 1 of social anthropology. I They urge that information ■ on the difficulties in obtaini ing accommodation for col- ■ oured students in Edinburgh should be circulated to the embassies of the various coun- ’ tries from which the students come; that the accommodation department should refuse to find approved lodgings for white students who are unwilling to share a room with a coloured student; and , that the university make • available a fixed proportion of i places in university accommo- : dation for overseas students.