Merton College, Oxford, has not admitted a single black student for five years.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2010/dec/06/the-oxbridge-whitewash-black-students
We used Freedom of Information requests to find out if they were carrying out the monitoring by racial group, and equality impact assessments which all Higher Education Institutes are obliged to do since the Race Relations Act (amendment) 2000.
They had no Race Equality Policy published on their website. Their response to being questioned on this was: "I do not think the point that you make about publishing a ‘separate’ race equality is substantive because that would merely entail writing essentially the same policy five times substituting the words race, religion and belief, gender, gender identity, age and disability in each case."
However, after the above response, they changed their mind and posted a Race Equality Policy on their website. (Draw your own conclusions on how much notice they will take of it.)
They also provided incomplete data that was five years out of date.
They also believe they are exempt from the equality duties placed on Higher Education Institutes. They told us: "The College is actually a charity and I am a charity officer not a public servant. I assume heavier burdens are placed on public authorities because they tend to be very large organisations with numerous support staff that are primarily funded by the taxpayer, whereas the College is none of these things."
We requested an internal review of the handling of our FOI request and Merton College said that: "Mr Webb has made a good effort to respond to your requests and therefore find it reasonable that he refused to continue to correspond further on these matters."
A full history of our FOI request to Merton College and all correspondence can be found at: http://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/monitoring_equality_impact_asses_25#incoming-142555
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