Last Wednesday, the death of Oxford student Alexander Rogers back in January was ruled a suicide by Oxfordshire Coroner’s Court. According to coroner Nicholas Graham, Rogers formed the intention to end his own life after an informal allegation of sexual misconduct by a fellow student caused his social circle at Corpus Christi College to “ostracise” him.
Although the details of the allegation remain murky, it is clear that six days before Rogers’ suicide, he had some sort of a sexual encounter with another student, who subsequently told friends that she felt “discomfort” about the incident. No formal complaint was ever made, but rumours about the incident quickly spread, and other students soon began turning on Rogers.
Dr Dominique Thompson, an independent consultant who aided the investigation, told the court that the allegations had created a “pile-on” effect, causing students throughout the college to turn away from Rogers due to an implicit obligation to “do the right thing”. In her testimony, Thomson added that it “was shocking to hear that students were treating each other in this way”.
This sentiment was echoed by Nicholas Graham, who characterised a university culture where students “rush to judgement without knowledge of all the facts” and “shun those accused”. He has since sent a Prevention of Future Deaths report to the Department of Education, urging ministers to “reflect on the concerns that have arisen” and “take those concerns forward”.
Since the conclusion of the inquest into Rogers’ death, there have been several attempts to “reflect” on the concerns in the press. Serenhedd James wrote that “Oxford’s cancel culture is putting lives at risk”. Professor Frank Furedi urged more “tolerance on our toxic university campuses” to “avoid more tragedies”. Celia Walden, in the pages of The Telegraph, argued that Rogers was not merely cancelled, but “bullied to death”.
It is a deeply uncomfortable thing to comment on and attempt to learn from someone’s suicide. Yet the testimonies from other students and staff members that have emerged in the wake of Graham’s report are indicative of a deeply unhealthy culture at one of the nation’s top educational institutions. The report describes this as “a form of ‘cancel culture’, [which involve] the exclusion of students from social circles based on allegations of misconduct, often without due process or a fair hearing”.
Of course, part of the problem for Rogers was that there could not be “due process or a fair hearing” without an actual complaint. A rumoured accusation of having caused “discomfort” during a sexual encounter was enough for several students to ostracise their former friend. Undoubtably, neither the student who originated the complaint, nor the those who shunned Rogers from their social circles, ever imagined that the consequences could be so tragic.
In fact, what Dr Thompson described as the “pile-on” effect may have caused many students to disassociate from Rogers out of pure self-interest. Writing in the Sunday Times, two students, one from Oxford, one from Cambridge, described how they “lived in fear of being cancelled”, adding “[w]e all did”. One of them recalled an earlier incident of a first-year student being “accused of racism in the week before the winter holiday”.
Despite the allegation being “vague and unsubstantiated and, as it turned out, untrue”, the initial accuser “created a group chat with most of our year on Instagram. They said that if we didn’t condemn them, we were just as bad. If we were friends with them, we were racist too”. The student went on to recall that when meeting up with the accused person, he discovered that “[t]hey were on the verge of dropping out. It had ruined their life. […] it turned out I was the only person who had reached out”.
Although there is no evidence of an explicit call to ostracise Rogers, it is not hard to imagine that other students may have feared for their own social reputations if they continued openly associating with him. One of the students writing in the Sunday Times described other incidents in which people were immediately shunned over minor indiscretions.
In one example, some male students, “during a drunken game of charades” had imitated the Cambodian dictator Pol Pot by “stretching their caucasian eyes with a fingertip at each temple”. Apparently, news of the students’ insensitive gimmick quickly spread and soon “many of their former friends chose never to speak to them again”.
The student goes on the say that the problem is not so much negative reactions to allegations of bad or insensitive behaviour, but rather “the impossibility of forgiveness or reconciliation”. Indeed, in a note left behind to his friends, Rogers not only expressed deep “remorse” for his actions, but also “a belief that they were unintentional but unforgiveable.”
As Celia Walden writes, the most painful part of the inquest was learning that “this talented sportsman, tipped to get a First Class degree, felt there was no way forward[.] No way to make amends for whatever he had done, no possibility of redemption”.
Fortunately, most university cancellations do not have consequences this tragic, but they are still seriously unpleasant. In a piece for The Telegraph, Rosa Silverman quotes several Oxbridge students and graduates, one of whom describes a “very charged atmosphere, where [one] had to be incredibly careful”, adding that the “pernicious side of cancel culture was in the everyday.”
Another recent graduate from Oxford recalled a culture of “super-toxic bullying that people could justify”. The person went on to say that “[p]lenty of people had their university experience ruined due to one slip-up. All it took was one allegation and you’d be done for. […] I think most people hated it, but couldn’t speak up for fear of being cancelled themselves.”
Similarly, Dr Serenhedd James, who teaches history at St Stephen’s House, Oxford, wrote of a student culture in which “tribes easily form. When a member of the pack is deemed to have erred, vengeance is immediate, ruthless and complete”. All of this testifies to a university culture where any allegation, no matter how unfounded, can have serious, painful consequences for the student accused, or even for those who merely defend or comfort them.
As Nicholas Graham wrote in this report, “suicide arises often from a complex interplay of factors”, and we should be careful about reading too much into any specific incident. This was no ordinary case of “cancel culture” in which someone is demonized for voicing an ‘offensive’ viewpoint, or for telling an insensitive joke to the wrong crowd.
Still, it has become clear from Rogers’ case, and from the testimonies from many others, that a culture exists at Oxford in which people feel justified in ostracising their fellow students over trivial or unsubstantiated allegations. At the very least, many seem scared of supporting those who are accused, out of fear for their own reputations. Unspecified rumours of misconduct should not be enough to cause social isolation. Nor should it require bravery to show support for a friend in need.