Do we really have to have a thread about tone policing? It seems we do.

Let’s start at the very beginning to help us understand that all of the emotional responses we’ve seen to what’s going on at @uniofleicester are normal, legitimate and triggered entirely by management.

Throughout last year, we have all been coping with a pandemic. Every single one of us. And management continually told us that our wellbeing was their ‘highest priority’. Well, as it turns out this was not the case.

In October, out of the blue, staff in some departments/directorates received emails telling them that there would be cuts in their areas. Staff were not prepared for this. Managers of whole areas were not told in advance and were consequently unable to support staff.

The stress of that situation was allowed to continue over the Christmas period following the rigmarole of ‘pre-change consultations’, which, in reality, were short meetings which provided little information or opportunity to feedback.

Then, on the first day of term, in the middle of the second wave, some staff receive emails telling them that their departments would be subject to action plans and that there would be redundancies. Again, staff had to wait to find out whether their job was on the line or not.

In the first formal consultation meetings staff find out whether or not they have been targeted for redundancy.

They are not told in an individual meeting with their managers at which support could have been arranged, but in departmental/divisional meetings with staff at home with unknown levels of support. This is a highly stressful situation.

And let’s be clear, that the stress is not only caused by what is happening, but how it is happening. Emails are arriving out of the blue, staff have little access to support.

No consideration is given to what it might feel like to receive such news when you’re sitting at home alone / trying to care for children / grieving for a relative lost to Covid.

So obviously the stress is building. It has been building for months since that first email arrived out-of-the-blue in October last year. It is hardly surprising that the whole situation has become overwhelming for many staff.

Some have cried quietly, other have expressed their frustration, anger and distress publicly. All of these are perfectly legitimate emotional responses to the situation that they have been put in by @uniofleicester management.

And, by the way, you don’t have to be ‘directly’ affected to have an emotional response to this situation. Seeing valued colleagues treated in this shabby way is also going to trigger emotional responses from those whose jobs aren’t yet at risk.

And let’s be quite clear that the only people responsible for the anger, frustration, upset and distress that people are publicly displaying are the managers that have mishandled this whole situation.

It’s important that we remember that emotional responses are normal. The fact that staff need to express those emotions is normal. It is human. Perhaps this humanity is what our managers do not understand.

So how do management respond? Well they use the cheap management trick that is ‘tone policing’ For those that need a definition, it’s what happens when people in power try to deflect attention from what you are saying by criticising the way you are saying it.

Tone policing is an exertion of power over people who are already subordinate or marginalised, very often at a time when those people are suffering or distressed. It’s experienced by marginalised groups all the time.

It’s a tactic often used by men against women and white people against people of colour. It’s a technique used to shut somebody down, to demonstrate power, to exclude.

This is exactly what we are seeing at the @uniofleicester. Through their ‘Shaping for Excellence’ plan, management have created a situation where people who were already stressed for numerous reasons, not least the pandemic, have been overwhelmed by the situation they face.

Management created that situation. The responses that people have exhibited are perfectly normal. For management to criticise people for responding emotionally to a distressing situation that they have created is cruel.

But it is a deliberate tactic. It is to deflect attention. It is to make it look as if *they* are the ones that are being mistreated. It is to portray people whose livelihoods they are threatening as unprofessional.

It is management’s way of deflecting attention from their appalling plans to make dozens of people redundant when we are in the grips of the pandemic, from their mistreatment of staff, from their attack on academic freedom.

Colleagues, you are expressing perfectly normal reactions to a distressing situation. You should not be made to feel bad for doing so. You should not feel ashamed for doing so. You should not be punished for doing so.

The shameful behaviour is not from colleagues at risk and those defending them. It is from the tone-policing management that seek to suggest that emotions are inappropriate and that emotional responses are something to be disciplined.

We will not allow them to tone police us in this way.

Love and solidarity, friends and colleagues.

Honk.