top of page
Search

Racially Diverse Friend Group Files Restraining Order Against College Photographer



It was an average morning for a group of multicultural college students, who were enjoying the June sunshine on their leafy campus. 'It was all so normal,' Sanjay tells us. 'Hua, Kwame, Diego, Amelia (she's gay,) and I were preparing for our upcoming exams when we heard rustling from the bushes.'


They were greeted with the cold, invasive eye of a long-lens camera.


The college photographer, 46-year-old Oliver Brown, has been tasked with designing glossy brochures for the university for ten years. Since then, he has been striving to represent the full range of brilliant students who have walked the hallowed halls. 'It isn't always easy,' he tells us. 'Most of the people here are white, cis, able-bodied and straight. I usually end up having to photoshop minorities into the background. That's why Sanjay's group were so irresistible. It's the kind of diversity we collage together from stock images and slap on the front page.'


All Oliver wanted was one picture of the gang huddled around a Bunsen-burner or poring over books together in the library, but the colourful clique refused.


'It's tokenism, plain and simple,' Hua said. 'The moment we saw him coming we scattered; Kwame discarded his wheelchair, Amelia started kissing Sanjay and Diego tore off his Yarmulke. We weren't going to let him exploit our differences to make up for the racist flaws in this institution.'


After another belligerent attempt from Brown to photograph them returning from an intersectional feminist book-club, the gang decided to press charges against the shutterbug.


Sanjay shouted 'See you next Tuesday... in court.'




First published 6 Jun 2023


If you enjoyed this archive item, why not buy thousands of archive stories found in our eBooks, paperbacks and hardbacks?
















Tiger Woods to be Trump's Middle East envoy


"He plays golf, he is behaving in an increasingly erratic way and he has convictions to his name," a spokes-putter for President Trump told reporters at Mar-a-Lago.


"Tiger Woods therefore seems the perfect representative for the President in peace talks with Iran.


"The only problem may be that Mr Woods attended the prestigious Stanford University.


"He might therefore bring intelligence and reasoning to the negotiations, rather than the blundering, pig-ignorant clown show that President Trump was planning."


image from Grok

Tramp awarded university degree after kipping in library

Brian, 53 (but looks 70) has become the first homeless person to be awarded a degree by the University of Padgate after spending five years sleeping in the Social Sciences section.


‘We checked the regs’, a spokesperson told us ‘and Brian’s time in the library could be APEL’d, which took care of year one’. APEL – or Accreditation of Prior Experience and Learning – is university-speak for cheating. It’s like Dark Matter but for qualifications.


‘He had to write assignments for years two and three but they weren’t bad. Okay, his academic writing could be better and he sometimes uses BBC Bitesize as a reference – but that’s true of most of our students’.


Brian’s dissertation – Girls Today: Highly Disappointing – was framed as a ‘lived experience narrative’ using swear words and graffiti in place of conventional sentence structure. It has been placed in the Restricted Reading section of the library.


Brian has had his critics at the university – mostly the security staff, really. Also his habit of constructing ‘book caves’ continues to irritate the librarians as it might set a bad example for the other sociology graduates sleeping rough there. Many students consider him an ‘inspiration’, given that he experienced despair, homelessness and poverty before attending university - whereas for them those are all in the future.



bottom of page