Letter: In all fairness...

The report of the Schneider-Ross consultants who were brought in to look at Cambridge's equal opportunities performance unaccountably left out the students altogether (Soapbox, THES, January 26).

"If we don't address equal opportunities, the students won't come," said one respondent. Cambridge lags behind almost all other universities in producing guidelines and codes of practice and procedures for staff and students alike. It still has no student complaints procedure, although it is at last on the way to that. It has several conflicting unrevised provisions for different groups of staff.

The lack of procedures goes with a lack of training, not only in the implementation of procedures but in the very ground rules of fairness.

Middle managers should not be being encouraged to listen to a member of staff's troubles and then to sit in judgement in a formal hearing leading to an oral warning. That is shocking. If we are to deliver such training, we have to do it better than this.

The report naively thinks management training will do the trick. There is a recommendation that "new managers" be taught something in their "induction training"; that existing managers be merely "offered" equality training; that this should happen within "a programme of support and development" (at which slightly patronising and soft terms academics will sneer); that there should be "mentoring" (by whom? Quis custodiet... ).

Cambridge has an administration, rather like a civil service, not managers. The academics run things. They need training too. Members of the new Equality Steering Group have no training in the areas where they are supposed to be overseeing improvement. In Cambridge's culture, the many sharp wits in the university are more likely to be used to delay change than to speed it. The recommendations of this damning report are not nearly strong enough to change the culture of amateurish muddling along in which Cambridge is sunk.

Not merely training but top-quality and obligatory training needs to become a requirement for everyone in Cambridge involved in making decisions of any sort affecting others' lives and careers. Our watchword should be "fairness" not merely "equality of opportunity". And we have to understand that this really is urgent.

G. R. Evans
Cambridge