WHEN The Saint, St Andrews’ independent newspaper, uploaded a video I had presented about a student protest against a proposed Reform society at St Andrews, the reaction took me aback.
Within 24 hours, the video had surpassed 30,000 views. Beneath it, nearly 200 comments had accumulated.
Some criticised the reporting, others descended into outright abuse. “Islamophobia isn’t a real thing, time to SYBAU (shut your bitch ass up),” one commenter wrote. Others likened Islam to “cancer” and wrote “fuck off home”.
The volume of racist and Islamophobic comments eventually forced The Saint to disable comments altogether, before publishing a statement condemning the abuse in its print edition a week later.
While it’s easy to dismiss the incident as another case of online trolling, the reaction reflects a wider shift taking place in universities, where debates over immigration, identity and belonging are increasingly playing out.
St Andrews is not the only institution facing these tensions. Student Reform societies have emerged or attempted to establish themselves at universities including Edinburgh, Durham, York and Manchester, often prompting similar petitions and backlash.
The Saint video reported on the protest staged by St Andrews Women Against the Far Right (WAFR) who had disrupted Reform St Andrews’ first pub social, claiming the group “demonises refugees” with “virulent Islamophobia”.
Prior to this, WAFR had circulated an open letter, urging the Students’ Union not to affiliate the Reform Society.
The demonstration drew national attention, prompting coverage in several newspapers and, most notably, a letter co-signed by Suella Braverman, former home secretary and Reform defector, and Malcolm Offord, leader of Reform Scotland.
Addressed to the university’s principal, the letter urged “swift action” to protect free speech which was supposedly threatened by the “aggression and intolerance” of a “mob of hard-left activists” who risked turning the university into a “bully’s playground”.
In an interview with The Saint following the protest and subsequent letter, Reform St Andrews’ anonymous founder, who had been temporarily appointed president, provided more insight on his views.
He said that Reform place less emphasis on “civic nationalism, [which is] that if you’re from Scotland, it doesn’t matter your race” and focuses more on being “ethnically patriotic” – a term which he defined as being the “opposite of civic nationalism”.
He went on to argue that “immigrants of the past are not the same as immigrants now”, giving the example of Irish immigrants who used to be heavily discriminated against but are now seen “as brothers” because they “speak our language, share our culture” and have similar “DNA”.
Other immigrants however, such as “the Chinese and the Indians” aren’t on “the same level as an Irishman”, because they don’t “[share our] customs” and are not of “our culture”.
Reform St Andrews has now disputed the interviewee’s description as president, saying that he had not been elected to the position at the time of the interview.
The society did, however, accept criticism of the interview, describing it as a “poorly made attempt” to articulate an argument about cultural assimilation. The interviewee also accepted that DNA “did not make sense”, admitting that he “did not speak clearly” and should have referred to “culture” instead.
For many students, however, the comments confirmed concerns that had previously felt more abstract.
Ananya Darshan, a St Andrews physics graduate who took part in WAFR’s efforts, said that the comments were “frankly ... shocking, not because of what was said but because of how brazenly it was said”.
For Darshan, the interview reflected something more sinister than one student sharing their opinions.
“He felt confident making those statements because he knew Reform were actually quite close to affiliation,” she said. “It is simply the consequence of a culture that has long been shifting in this direction.”
Darshan described watching political ideas that once felt firmly outside the mainstream become increasingly accepted in everyday student life.
“It wasn’t just a protest against a Reform society, it was a protest against the normalisation of the extreme. The thought of my friends having to interact with any organisation that fundamentally questioned their right to exist in this country was horrifying,” she said.
So when Reform St Andrews announced, in a now-deleted Instagram post, that it would “become an official society” on April 15, 2026 after being “granted prospective status and on the road to affiliation”, many students’ resolve to protest only strengthened.
Speaking to The National, the Students’ Association clarified that “there is no official provisional status” because the new affiliation policy “ensures all societies that apply by the deadline will be considered for affiliation, provided they complete the required paperwork correctly and on time”.
On April 15, as Union officials gathered to deliberate on application outcomes, more than 20 societies gathered outside the Union building, including WAFR, St Andrews Muslim Students Association (STAMSA) and St Andrews Students for Justice for Palestine (SJP), urging the Union not to affiliate Reform.
For Ananya, the outcome felt far from certain. “A man stated in a student newspaper that my DNA was not the same as his and that I would never be on his level and I fully expected him to still be the president of an officially affiliated student society by the end of the month.”
So when Reform did not make it to the list of newly affiliated societies, Ananya recalled feeling shocked. “I honestly didn’t expect us to succeed,” she told me.
Their success, however, was a team effort, she emphasised. “Artists offered to make posters, music societies offered music and students educated on university politics helped tailor our official report. It was beautiful. That is the St Andrews I’m proud of.”
Union president of opportunities Robert Moran said the Union’s role is to “ensure a positive student experience, create opportunities for students to find community and belonging, and ensure effective representation for all students,” while remaining “party-politically neutral”.
He added that a Reform society would be eligible to apply again during the next affiliation window in October 2026.
The decision brought Reform’s first affiliation attempt to an end. Yet the controversy and contention surrounding Reform in St Andrews represents a bigger culture war which extends beyond Fife.
In recent weeks, ILM Student Halls, a Dundee-based halal student accommodation, became the target of intense online scrutiny and threats after a social media post by the Daily Express falsely claimed the accommodation was exclusively for Muslim students.
A spokesperson for ILM Halls rejected the claim, saying that students of other faiths, including Christians, also choose to stay at ILM and enjoy the peaceful environment.
ILM’s spokesperson went on to say that it has faced “calls for shutting the place down or even worse, burning it down”.
They continued: “We have had to communicate with students and ask them to be extra vigilant when coming in and out halls, which isn’t a pleasant thing to have to ask someone when coming to the safety of their ‘home’.”
Additional security measures – including private patrols around the property – were introduced while staff sought to reassure anxious residents and their families, who have been very understanding and supportive.
For Sufyan Elmansuri, former president of STAMSA and Dundee resident, the hostility towards ILM can’t be separated from the atmosphere he says many Muslim students have faced in recent years.
During his time studying in St Andrews and representing Muslim students, Elmansuri read testimonies from students who frequently described feeling stereotyped, viewed with suspicion or labelled with terms such as “extremist” when discussing Palestine or sharing concerns about anti-Muslim prejudice.
Rather than isolated incidents, he argues that these events create a “wider atmosphere of anxiety, isolation and self-censorship” that impacts students’ mental health, sense of belonging and willingness to participate fully in university life.
“My concern about Reform’s attempted affiliation was never that students should be prevented from holding or discussing different political opinions,” he said. “However, freedom of political expression does not mean that every organisation is automatically entitled to institutional recognition.”
For Elmansuri, the controversy surrounding Reform’s attempted affiliation and the abuse directed at ILM are “connected by the same broader concern”, which is that “anti-Muslim, anti-migrant and ethnonationalist hostility is increasingly being presented as ordinary political debate.”
Reform say that they have no plans to re-apply for affiliation with the Union since almost all their former leaders and members have switched to “trying to establish a Restore Britain Society”, which is described as a far-right party, even further to the right of Reform.
Universities have established themselves as spaces where conflicting and often uncomfortable political ideas can coexist – take Tommy Robinson’s recent debate at the Oxford Union, for example.
But, increasingly students and institutions are being forced to question where the boundary lies between preserving political expression, granting institutional support and ensuring that students at the centre of these debates, particularly minorities, don’t feel unwelcome or as though they have to justify their presence.
In St Andrews, the landslide of abuse and lack of critical debate meant the comments were turned off and the space for discussion disappeared with them. But when these debates spill into real life, the consequences are felt far beyond a comment section.
