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The Guardian - UK
The Guardian - UK
National
Rachel Keenan

Why Scottish students at Edinburgh University want more support to counter classism

Shanley Breese and Freya Stewart stand in front of a historic stone university building; they are both young women with long, dark hair. Breese is taller, with curly hair worn loose, and wears a light zip-up jacket; Stewart has tied-back straight hair and wears a black anorak
Shanley Breese, left, said the University of Edinburgh’s guidance on discrimination was ‘tone deaf’, while Freya Stewart, right, said staff were not used to advising Scottish students. Photograph: Murdo MacLeod/The Guardian

From the first day Shanley Breese started her law degree at the University of Edinburgh, she encountered demeaning comments about her accent. She was told she was hard to understand and was asked to repeat herself in tutorials when she used words from the Scots language.

“It was just a little thing to differentiate us and point it out … It meant that I didn’t participate in my tutorials,” she says.

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