Durham University has withdrawn its offer of study to three students after they were caught making racist, homophobic and ableist comments in an unofficial Freshers Group Chat on WhatsApp.

Here are a few of the offending screenshots, which were collected by The Tab…

Indeed, this wasn’t a group chat between friends where someone leaked the messages, but rather a group chat involving hundreds of prospective students who don’t know each other, beginning their first year at Durham this September 2024. Imagine how stupid you have to be to say anything racist in a group chat like that with your name, face and phone number attached?

You would think a group of 18-21 year olds in 2024 would be savvy enough to realise that there’s only one way this was ever going to end.  Of course, all it takes is for one student to identify with the slurs and boom – you’ve just committed a hate crime.

All three individuals who used slurs in the chat had their offers withdrawn by Durham after an investigation was conducted by the university. Alex*, one of the offenders in the chat who had accepted an offer to study Law at the uni starting in September, is one of three people to have had his offer withdrawn with immediate effect after he used multiple slurs in the chat.

Alex used emojis to spell “n***a” as well as calling others in the chat “f****t” and “fr****t”. He also replied to another chat member, saying “What u saying T**d” and “R****d has two” when discussing the number of Rs in the word.

Alex also said in the chat: “I hate immigrants” and “Immigrants fucking suck, apart from the good ones”. He also told a member of the group chat: “Shut up migrant.” Alex also asked the group chat: “If you were to choose to eradicate Romani g*****s or Irish g***s, which one would you do?”. Absolute menace!

Speaking to The Tab about the use of homophobic slurs in his messages, Alex said:

“Whilst I can apologise for any unintentional offence caused to members of the group chat who misinterpreted my humour as a genuine threat upon the safety of a gay person, I am disappointed by the lack of context that has been provided by these screenshots and hope that my poorly thought out response does not brand me as ‘homophobic’ in spite of my own sexuality and vehement opposition to any form of violence directed towards minority groups.

“It is instead a running joke between me and [another group chat member] who are close friends. Although there was no malice in my words, I acknowledge that I was ignorant of the full effects these words could have on people unaware of the context. Regardless of my own reclaiming of the word, I should have been aware that other people were not comfortable with it and, as such, should have confined this sort of language to groups of people I already know are comfortable with more ‘close to the line’ humour.”

It was just a joke! Regarding his comments on immigration, Alex said:

“I cannot overstate enough that these comments regarding immigration are not an expression of my genuine beliefs and are satirical and intended to ridicule the far right who genuinely hate immigrants. I would not be in this country without immigration, as both my parents are immigrants themselves. My comments on immigration are meant to be taken as facetious and not as a genuine expression of my beliefs.

“I can understand why this could be taken at face value by just looking at the message without context; however, with this context, it is clear that this joke between [another group chat member] and me was not intended to cause discomfort for anyone else. I did not consider how other people may have interpreted these messages as legitimate, even within context, and on my own part, I can only apologise to anyone who took these facetious statements to heart or who felt offended by this joke.

“It is rather an obvious example of me completely misjudging the tone of the conversation and escalating a joke too far. I take responsibility for my own ineptitude and lack of judgment at this moment and cannot overstate how apologetic I am for misrepresenting my own character and portraying myself as a bigot when I am not.”

It was all just satire intended to mock the far right! On his use of racism in the chat, Alex added:

“I cannot justify my naive and childish belief that by not actually typing out the N-word itself, it would not have the same impact. It was incredibly juvenile of me to think that since I had not actually said the word in plain text, I was somehow avoiding the controversy surrounding the use of the N-word. As a white person, I should not even be joking about that word, and I can only apologise for my childishness, immaturity and impulsiveness in this situation. There is nothing I can offer other than my most sincerest apologies and commitment to be better in the future.”

Welp, no excuse for that one it seems. In any case, this should serve as a timely reminder to anyone out there who thinks a WhatsApp group chat is a safe place to share your edgy jokes or make racist comments. We saw it with Team GB at the Olympics the other week and we’re seeing it now with this situation at Durham. Someone in that chat group is screenshotting your messages and landing you in trouble, every time.

Imagine – getting into a university as good as Durham and not even making it to Freshers Week because you cracked a racist/sexist/ableist joke in the group chat. I mean, I’m sure there’s plenty of racists/sexists/etc on campus already, but at least they’re not all dumb enough to show it off in a Freshers group chat. You live and you learn.

For the uni student facing 45 years in prison after funding Dubai trips with his girlfriend through a multi-million fraud scheme, click HERE.