A ‘Tracksuit and Trance’ night hosted by 4Play Events and LOGIC has changed its “offensive” event description following criticism from the University of Exeter Feminist Society.
Whilst the themed night is still set to take place on the evening of 8th October at Fever and Boutique nightclub, organisers have apologised for offence caused by the original description, and now edited the Facebook page for the event.
The event description originally encouraged attendees to don tracksuits, and to “look a likkle bit pikey” when attending on Monday night. It also suggested taking “Vicky Pollard” as style inspiration, and encouraged clubbers to wear brands “Londsdale” or Umbro”.
The event description originally encouraged attendees to don tracksuits, and to “look a likkle bit pikey”.
The Feminist Society released a statement on Thursday 4th October in which working Class Representative, Lucy Morris, condemned the “lack of regard for the impact on working class students seeing this event”. Speaking of the theme and the language used, Morris explained that “[e]veryone is aware that “pikey” is a slur, and all should be aware that dressing up as people poorer than you is completely inexcusable.”
Morris furthermore added that “[t]he snobbery of events such as this is part of what makes working class students like me feel wholly unwelcome at Exeter”.
MORRIS: “the snobbery of events such as this is part of what makes working class students like me feel wholly unwelcome at Exeter”.
Upon being contacted by Exeposé, hosts LOGIC immediately omitted the word “pikey” from the event description. This was later reduced further to a simple instruction which at the time of writing reads as “come in your trackies”.
In response to Morris’ statement, Sam King of LOGIC events told Exeposé that “[w]e welcome all students to all of our events” adding that “[w]e would like to apologise for any offence caused from our event description […] It was never our intention to offend anyone or written with any malice. We have learnt from this mistake and ensure such oversights do not happen again.”
KING: “It was never our intention to offend anyone or written with any malice. We have learnt from this mistake”.
In justification of the theme, King, explained that it was “intended to be a one-off to a standard UK night-club policy which does not allow tracksuits to be worn.” He also commented that “[t]racksuits are also often associated with underground dance music.”
4Play Events also issued a short apology via their Facebook page on the morning of 8th October.
