One of the country’s top colleges has been forced to apologise after two lecturers were overheard using offensive language about students.
Galway-Mayo Institute of Technology said sorry over the tutors who forgot to switch their cameras off after watching virtual presentations.
In a video shared on social media, they can be overheard using offensive and insulting language to ridicule the work students had presented online.
Some undergraduates took to social media today calling for both employees involved to be sacked.
Business students, who had just made online presentations, could hear the lecturers discuss their work and allocate marks as their feeds remained live.
One of the lecturers said: “I thought that f*****g [Name], I thought he’d never – and he’s sick, that lad – I didn’t like
to, and eventually I said I have to do something, and he still didn’t stop.”
The other responded: “I couldn’t take much more of them anyway, I was exhausted. [Name] wasn’t too bad, I thought he was interesting, he was looking at the camera.
“But the other fella [student’s name], I thought I’d have to get a drill and start drilling my teeth, they were so painful
to be listening to.”
At one point, the tutors appeared to speculate whether a student may have
a disability.
One of them asked: “Has [student’s name] something wrong with them?”
The other replied: “Funny, I was thinking that.
“I was saying, before I make a decision on voice and body language, they were so slow speaking that I was wondering… I thought the very same thing – I thought I’d better check Access to see if they were on the list some place for something.”
The conversation, which appears to have been recorded by one of the students, is understood to have taken place last week.
GMIT president Dr Orla Flynn said “apologies would be issued to the students directly concerned”.
She added: “I would like to wholeheartedly apologise to our students for the data breach that has caused such deep hurt and dismay. GMIT is known as a student-centred institute and some of the comments made by our staff do not reflect the values to which we aspire.
“We are taking the breaches of GMIT policies and data protection legislation very seriously.”
GMIT Students’ Union president Victor O’Loughlin said the incident is being investigated by the student body.
He described it as “disappointing” but declined to comment further.
Meanwhile, it has emerged one of the tutors was working today
A student stated: “Absolutely shocked to hear that one of the GMIT lecturers involved in those shocking videos were still allowed to lecture today [Monday} as if nothing ever happened.
“It’s a lot more than just a “data breach”. It’s a complete violation of people’s confidence and their privacy, a complete lack of respect for us as GMIT students to say awful things like that so casually over a Teams meeting. Absolutely disgusted with it all.”
Another tweeted: “A ‘data breach’ more like outright insulting students.”.
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