The punch bag machine that sparked the comment. The picture was not taken of the person the comment was made about.
De Montfort Students’ Union are looking into a complaint claiming that a DJ used a homophobic term over the speaker system on Wednesday night.
It is reported that a DJ referred to a sports team member as a ‘poof’ because he was unable to get a high score on a punch bag machine.
Harry Dean, a third year Journalism and Media Communication student heard the comment and felt instantly offended.
He said: “I heard the DJ call someone in the crowd a ‘poof’ – I turned around and he said it again.
“It’s really not cool, it made me so angry that it ruined my entire night. “
Harry and his friends then left Level 1 as the incident had made them feel uncomfortable.
He added: “DMU prides itself on being a diverse community – if it had been a racial or religious slur people would be up in arms.”
Harry made an immediate complaint via twitter to the students’ union, Welfare and Community Officer Rebecca Robson and the Vice Chancellor, Dominic Shellard.
“I tweeted about my upset and got replies from both the SU and Dominic Shellard the VC – so I hope it gets investigated.
“It just proves that no matter how far equal rights has come, we still live in a homophobic society and we’ve still got a long way to go.”
The DSU exec team followed up the complaint and contacted the bar management team.
Amie Chapman, Deputy President Education, said: “I can speak for the entire team when I say language like that is not tolerated in our students union whatsoever.
“We have policies such as the anti-harassment one to protect students when incidents like this happen.
“It allows us to hold individuals to account and act immediately.
“We want our union to be a safe space for all of our students, so all DSU executive officers feel a collective responsibility for that to happen.”
Chris Hackett, Commercial Development Manager at DSU said: “We are aware of an incident regarding one of the DJ’s making an inappropriate comment at the Students’ Union last night.
“The individual reported what happened to the Duty Manager during our night time session and immediately apologised for the out of character comment.
“We regret that individuals were subjected to such use of language and want to re-assure students that DSU takes matters such as this very seriously; in line with our Anti-Harassment and Bullying policy we are taking appropriate action to deal with the incident.”
De Montfort Students’ Union’s Welfare Centre offers advice and support to all De Montfort University students.
Visit www.demontfortstudents.com/support/welfare for more information.
