The Bartlett School of Architecture has refused to respond to a barrage of freedom of information requests by a former student investigating alleged racial and sexual discrimination, claiming the requests were "vexatious" and had "little obvious value".
Emails seen by Dezeen show that University College London (UCL), which the school is part of, denied a series of requests from Eleni Kyriacou seeking details of grades and dropout rates sorted by gender.
Requests placed "significant burden on UCL"
According to UCL, the numerous Freedom of Information (FOI) requests from Kyriacou placed "a significant burden on UCL" and caused "undue distress to staff".
"Your requests will not be processed further because they are being treated as vexatious under section 14(1) of FOI," wrote UCL in an email received by Kyriacou on 24 March 2021. "The reasons are that the above requests are the latest in a series of 19 requests that impose a significant burden on UCL, cause undue distress to staff and have little obvious value in terms of the wider public interest," it continued.
The final request submitted was to see the breakdown of grading by gender for seven tutors at the Bartlett along with the dropout rates and failure rates for the past 13 years divided by gender.

Kyriacou, who studied at the school from 1998 to 2002, was gathering the data as part of her investigation into claims of racism and sexism at the school, ...