In an exclusive interview with Building Design, Eleni Kyriacou says that the Bartlett systematically discriminated against women in its grading and left a trail of devastated lives and students with long-lasting mental health issues

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Source: Jack Hobhouse

The Bartlett by Hawkins Brown

检举人的投诉引发了巴特利特建筑学院长达数十年的有毒文化的调查,她对这份“该死的”报告表示欢迎,她说这证明了受害者的清白。

But Eleni Kyriacou also claims that the extent of the sexism within the school, and the impact this had on many women’s final grades, has not yet been sufficiently revealed.

Speaking to Building Design, she shared data from a Freedom of Information Act (FOI) request that points to significant underperformance by female architecture students dating back to 2007.

>> Also read:Bartlett suspends staff as investigation uncovers ‘toxic’ culture lasting decades

>> Also read:Bartlett report sheds much-needed light on our profession’s wider failings

数据支持了她的说法,即在2007年至2019年期间,获得本科一级学位的男性比例普遍高于女性。女性也比男性多出2分2秒。

Women’s percentages improved markedly from 2017 onwards whereas those for men have been broadly similar throughout the period covered by the UCL data.

“There are people who have been unfairly failed and it destroys their life,” Kyriacou said. “They can’t get their RIBA part I so can’t be an architect – and they can’t do a masters in something else.

Why were women underperforming? There is no reason they should be underperforming. Their brains aren’t smaller

“For example, in 2013 16% of women got firsts against 33% of men. In 2018 it was 30% against 60%. That’s an insane difference,” Kyriacou said.

She believes the data should have alerted UCL sooner to the need to investigate systemic problems at the architecture school. Instead, she says, it was ignored for years.

“为什么女性表现不佳?它们没有理由表现不佳。它们的大脑并不小。

“If you see this kind of thing, you should be investigating. They could have been monitoring this since 2007, but they did nothing.”

Kyriacou believes the grading had devastating consequences for many students. She wants UCL to identify the women whose grades were supressed and compensate those whose lives and careers have suffered as a consequence of what the report described as a culture of bullying, misogyny and sexism.

“One woman got a 2:1 in her second year, with 67%, but was only offered her third choice of unit for the third year and ended up with a 2:2. This matters because, when you apply for a job, they are going to hire the guy with the 2:1 not the woman with the 2:2,” she said.

“That’s a lifetime loss of earnings because you’ll get a worse job than the man.”

Kyriacou said she lost a year of her life to depression after being bullied by staff in her second year at the school. She described having pages of her portfolio being ripped up by a senior leader and being forced to work through the summer to get into the third year.

她后来成为一名时装设计师,现居雅典。她说,她花了20年时间才鼓起勇气提出正式投诉,但伦敦大学学院告诉她,只有在她发现其他人有类似担忧的情况下,学院才会进行调查。

“It was never my job to do that,” she said. “If they suspected there were more, they should have investigated, not asked me to investigate.”

尽管如此,基里亚库还是通过校友社交媒体群找到了一些人,并在《卫报》去年发布的一份档案中记录了大约20个故事。

Kyriacou说,她听到的最糟糕的故事之一是,一位聪明的女性在第一年表现很好,但在第二年遭遇了歧视文化,表现很差。基里亚库说,她被迫和同样的老师重修,如果她让他们失望了,她甚至写信道歉。

The woman scraped through her second year, but her third year also went badly. Her tutors failed her but allowed her to resubmit over the summer.

Kyriacou said the tutors pressured the woman to focus on her design portfolio during this process. As a result she handed in an essay late, just missing out on a first for that – and failing her degree by five points. “At the end of four years, she doesn’t have a degree.

She went through hell,” Kyriacou said. “And people ask why there aren’t more women architects…”

>> Also read:Do we value our profession so little that its future competence is left to chance?

上个月,在《卫报》刊登了Kyriacou从伦敦大学学院校友那里收集到的投诉后,豪利特布朗大学的独立调查人员受伦敦大学学院委托,发表了一份120页的报告。

The report blew the lid off a toxic “boys’ club”, detailing multiple cases of bullying, misogyny and racism and a “culture of protectionism” among staff.

据说,一名高级领导已经删除了投诉,并将不良行为正常化。Kyriacou称这份报告是“令人谴责的、全面的、前所未有的”。

豪利特·布朗发现66%的学生回应说巴特利特对他们的心理健康有不利影响。该公司的报告详细描述了多起学生(尤其是女性学生,也包括有色人种和其他人)在至关重要的年终展上被歧视、在批评中被嘲笑、被辱骂、被种族歧视、被不恰当的触摸、被错误地告知成绩不及格、被给予更少的展示空间的案例。

“The report says they must introduce black-and-white criteria for grading because, if it is purely subjective, it gives scope for discrimination,” said Kyriacou.

She argues that the report is just the beginning and UCL now needs to identify those former female students who may have suffered from discriminatory marking and compensate them for the mental and financial damage caused.

Following her claims, UCL has shared data with Building Design which it said showed that the apparent gender bias against women has now been addressed. Professor Jacqui Glass, interim director of the Bartlett School of Architecture at UCL, told Building Design: “We apologise unreservedly for the unacceptable behaviour.

“We know we have a way to go to rebuild trust, but we are committed to taking action to create a safer, supportive and more positive culture for students and staff.”

UCL should look into the cases of students who were unfairly graded and see whether there is a way of awarding them their part Is

基里亚库说,她很高兴伦敦大学学院最终就豪利特布朗学院的调查采取行动,并敦促遵守报告的所有建议。She wants long-standing staff to be dismissed, newer staff to be disciplined but given a second chance where appropriate, and for the unit and crit systems to be overhauled or reformed as laid out in the report’s recommendations.

She also believes that compensation for those who have suffered must now be top of the agenda. “UCL should look into the cases of students who were unfairly graded and see whether there is a way of awarding them their part Is,” Kyriacou said.

And UCL should pay compensation for medical expenses such as the counselling fees incurred by some students as a result of the Bartlett’s culture.

“Hundreds of people have been victims of misconduct here,” she said. “We have to hold them to account. It can be painful, but I don’t want the next generation to inherit what I had to go through.”

A group of high-profile figures in the architectural community have since submittedan open letter, published in Buiding Design,批评他们认为伦敦大学学院过于仓促地发表了豪利特·布朗报告。

The letter argues that the anonymous nature of the acusations and widespread sharing of staff members’ names on social media has led to a “witch-hunt”. The letter also claims that the report ”conflates serious accusations of sexism, racism and bullying with trivial claims about informal staff-student socialising and studio reviews”.

Building Design asked UCL to respond to the data that showed women were getting poorer grades than men

Professor Jacqui Glass, Interim Director of the Bartlett School of Architecture at UCL, said:

“We apologise unreservedly for the unacceptable behaviour that some of our students and staff experienced during their time at the Bartlett School of Architecture and thank everyone who has come forward to disclose what they have been through. We are taking immediate action following the outcome of an independent investigation.

“We regularly review levels of attainment and positive steps have been made to redress awarding gaps between male and female students over recent years.

“For undergraduate students, a similar proportion of men and women achieved 2:1 or first-clas degrees between 2014 and 2018 and since 2019, a higher percentage of women (22 per cent more) achieved a 2:1 or first.

“At a Masters level, a higher percentage of men got a distinction up until 2017 (56% to 44%) but this gap has closed, with female students outperforming male students in 2018 and 2020, with a near 50:50 balance in those awarded distinctions in 2019 and 2021.

“We know we have a way to go to rebuild trust, but we are committed to taking action to create a safer, supportive and more positive culture for students and staff.”