Response to the University of Cape Town’s Health Science Students Council
The response of the Health Sciences Students Council (HSSC) at the University of Cape Town to my article about bullying in the MBChB III class provides grist for my mill.
The members of the HSSC “reject the notion that black students are ‘cry-bullies’ for calling out people who victimize and discriminate against them”. I too would reject that notion if they really were victimized and discriminated against. However, my article provided evidence to show that at least some of the purported instances of victimization and discrimination were nothing of the kind. It is noteworthy that the HSSC provides no evidence to counter my claims or to support their own. They are content with bald assertion of their own preconceived idea.
The HSSC claims that the article “is based on the experiences of just two non-black students”. That claim is false. First, if they had read the article properly, they would have noticed that one of the two students to whom they referred has denied that he is “white”. Does the HSSC claim to know better? Is it the arbiter of people’s own (racial) identities?
Second, my article drew on comprehensive screenshots of comments by many students (“black” and “non-black”), corroborated reports of what transpired in some classes, and on what occurred in the “emergency” class meeting. The vast majority of those who spoke at the latter identified themselves as “black”, and their experiences and words were quoted, often verbatim.
The HSSC claims that “[n]ot all interactions between these groups of students are accounted for in the article” but they do not fill in any of the purported gaps. If they had done so with the sort of detail I provided, we could have evaluated those claims too.