Student newspapers across the UK have launched a national survey to investigate the prevalence of racism on campus after a racist incident at Warwick University garnered national attention last week.

Led by, The Boar, Warwick’s student newspaper, student publications have launched the survey in order to determine the scale of racist abuse on campus, and to gain insight into how such incidents are dealt with by universities and student unions.

Last week, Faramade Ifaturoti, a biomedical science student at Warwick posted an image from her halls of residence of a bunch of bananas with offensive terms scrawled over them to twitter. Her tweet has since been shared thousands of times, with a solidarity campaign “#WeStandWithFara” appearing quickly. The University has since launched an investigation into the incident “as a matter of urgency”.

Speaking to The Independent, The Boar say the incident led them to contact as many student publications as possible to spark “a nationwide attempt to investigate the true nature of racism at universities.”

We are currently releasing online surveys to the student population asking about their experiences of racism at university and its prevalence.

“This is to be followed by FoI (Freedom of Information) requests to UK universities regarding the number of reported racist incidents on campuses, and access to university for BME students and academics.

“We are already finding a worrying percentage of racial abuse goes unreported and that there are unclear or non-existent channels for reporting such abuses.”

In partnership with student newspapers nationwide, The Gryphon has produced a localised version of the survey to be filled out by any University of Leeds students wishing to take part. To respect the confidentiality of all participants answers are anonymised and your responses cannot be traced back to you by any member of The Gryphon’s editorial team.