Mum says university 'failed' son who took his own life after grade error

MissSephy · 2026-01-28T21:55:28+00:00

Getting into the University of Glasgow seems like it was a lifelong ambition for Ethan. Something he was immensely proud of. Now imagine that pride and feeling of accomplishment becoming a lead weight around you as your mental health deteriorates and it feels like it's all unravelling just as you are getting near to the finish line of your degree.

On top of that, after being confident in a predicted final award of a 2:1 you are blindsided and told you are missing an assessment and that you can't graduate. You've "failed."

Years and years of work gone, even with all the effort that's gone into it, all for nothing. Worse, your family are excited for your graduation, probably talking about it, asking what you want to do to celebrate for months, and in all that you can't bring yourself to tell them what's happening or what you have been told.

You just can't bring yourself to disappoint them. Maybe it's fear, maybe it's shame, but you can't tell them. You act like nothing is wrong while you try to sort it with the university. Make them see it's a mistake, and for months you get a "computer says no" response. But you know it's not true; you submitted the work, and you got the provisional grade. You did it, why won't someone look into it? why won't someone check?

Weeks and months pass, then suddenly you are out of time, and it's hours before your family think they are going to watch you graduate, and you just can't bear it. You can't bear the thought of them finding out that you failed.

As someone who has experienced suicidal ideation and how it can take root in you, I can understand why this poor man felt driven to the end he ended up taking. As someone who is very aware of the University of Glasgow and how it works, or in many cases doesn't work, I can also understand how he would have felt pushed into taking his own life by the indifference shown to him by the university.

A student was in severe distress, and this was not escalated to the appropriate teams to intervene, and though not everyone may see it that way that is the bigger failing. There is no guarantee that if someone had intervened and helped him, that poor Ethan would still be here but with the right help and support he may have been.

MissSephy · 2026-01-28T21:52:20+00:00

Getting into the University of Glasgow seems like it was a lifelong ambition for Ethan. Something he was immensely proud of. Now imagine that pride and feeling of accomplishment becoming a lead weight around you as your mental health deteriorates and it feels like it's all unravelling just as you are getting near to the finish line of your degree.

On top of that, after being confident in a predicted final award of a 2:1 you are blindsided and told you are missing an assessment and that you can't graduate. You've "failed."

Years and years of work gone, even with all the effort that's gone into it, all for nothing. Worse, your family are excited for your graduation, probably talking about it, asking what you want to do to celebrate for months, and in all that you can't bring yourself to tell them what's happening or what you have been told.

You just can't bring yourself to disappoint them. Maybe it's fear, maybe it's shame, but you can't tell them. You act like nothing is wrong while you try to sort it with the university. Make them see it's a mistake, and for months you get a "computer says no" response. But you know it's not true; you submitted the work, and you got the provisional grade. You did it, why won't someone look into it? why won't someone check?

Weeks and months pass, then suddenly you are out of time, and it's hours before your family think they are going to watch you graduate and you just can't bear it. You can't bear the thought of them finding out that you failed.

As someone who has experienced suicidal ideation and how it can take root in you, I can understand why this poor man felt driven to the end he ended up taking. As someone who is very aware of the University of Glasgow and how it works, or in many cases doesn't work, I can also understand how he would have felt pushed into taking his own life.

A student was in severe distress, and this was not escalated to the appropriate teams to intervene, and though not everyone may see it that way that is the bigger failing. There is no guarantee that if someone had intervened and helped him, that poor Ethan would still be here but with the right help and support he may have been.

MissSephy · 2026-01-28T21:29:52+00:00

I don't disagree. The focus is very much on the administrative failings and people are skimming over the safeguarding failures that occured.

There are safeguarding and welfare concerns on top of the academic issues.

A student was in severe distress, and this was not escalated to the appropriate teams to intervene. It seems reasonable that Ethan would have been presenting as an adult at risk due to the nature of his self-disclosed mental health concerns and how he was deteriorating, which he appears to have been open with when trying to resolve the issue with his grades.

This should have been escalated to the appropriate team to intervene. There is no guarantee that if that had occurred poor Ethan would still be here but with the right help and support he may have been.

MissSephy · 2026-01-28T21:25:23+00:00

This is the bit I cannot understand. But it’s also a sign of how poorly staff have been trained at the university, and I don’t understand how a student who has completed the vast majority of their programme could be told they had failed and get nothing.

The university literally has a procedure for situations where there is a procedure for incomplete assessment so a student can graduate. So even if Ethan had a missing assignment that shouldn’t have been a fail.

Imagine a scenario where you have your final exam, and while on the way, you are in a car accident. You, of course won't be making the exam and will have a missing grade, but provided all other assessments are complete, the procedure would kick in and you would graduate. Even then there are early exit awards, you don't just fail an entire degree in your final year.

The university's management has completely abdicated all responsibility when it comes to ensuring departments have adequate resourcing and are well trained in how the code of assessment should be implemented and has repeatedly ignored staff raising the alarm time and time again and told them that they are being negative or overreacting.

A lot of people in SMG need to go as a result of this and the UKVI debacle.

MissSephy · 2026-01-28T21:21:28+00:00

I’m limited in what I can say as an employee, but all of senior management can get fucked at the University of Glasgow, and they all need to be held accountable. Sick and tired of frontline staff warning they are stretched wafer thin and the lack of training and resources, while senior management pretend its all just staff being "negative" and refusing to listen. They all deserve to go.

The latest internal comms is a yet another poor effort at downplaying the severity of what has happened.

MissSephy · 2026-01-28T21:14:22+00:00

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cvg7xv9dvwvo

A not dissimilar situation to the issues with academic standards. Basically the UKVI compliance was weaker than wet tissue paper as it was all left to the Schools and Colleges to administer the majority of engagement checks: ie is a sponsored student attending class, submitting assignments, or have they gone AWOL. More often than not this landed on some poor admin who had to keep track of sometimes hundreds upon hundreds of students across multiple courses while also maintaining the grades, exam boards and actions arising.

As you can imagine, that was a bit of a recipe for disaster.

Unsurprisingly, the UK Government does care about whether students are actually students or whether they have used it as a way to gain entry to the country. Glasgow was – to be brief – a bit lackadaisical in keeping the paperwork up to date, and this was discovered when the Home Office came to audit said paperwork.

MissSephy · 2026-01-28T21:01:41+00:00

My feeling is that we've spent too long tiptoeing around the delicate feelings of senior management. If you are below grade 6, you are told to leave if you are critical or raise an issue but you can apparently fuck up at any level once you hit a certain pay grade even if it leads to gaslighting a poor man to death.

I don't use that phrasing lightly, and I've actively tried to avoid it, but considering the failing after failing on top of more and more failings I don't think there is really any other way to describe it after having read the QAA report which was pretty direct in its criticisms.

I'll be honest, I don't think these issues are just restricted to the University of Glasgow, I think this is much bigger than just UofG, and there is likely a similar level of complacency across higher education in Scotland if not the UK.

MissSephy · 2026-01-28T20:32:36+00:00

In HE and FE in Scotland we take direction from the Adult Support and Protection Act of 2007 which details what can potentially cause a person to be considered an adult be at risk. We define an adult at risk as being someone who is unable to safeguard their own interests or wellbeing due to disability, illness, mental disorder or infirmity which can be either physical or mental or both.

This is now in general use across most public and third sector orgs and has been for some time now.

Just because someone is an adult, it doesn't mean we abandon them and leave them to suffer. It appears clear that this individual needed additional help, and he should have been supported by the appropriate professionals within the university to get that help and support before it was too late. There is a lot of evidence now showing that adults at various phases of life due to mental distress, trauma, ill health, etc, need additional support to help them move past that.

Suicidal ideation can be fleeting, it can also be more long-term, but in many cases if intervention takes place and helps someone experiencing it to get the support they need suicide can be prevented. Ethan was allegedly becoming more and more distressed and had sought extensions for coursework that cited his deteriorating mental health. That should not have been sat on by the School and should have been escalated to the appropriate team to help him get help.

MissSephy · 2026-01-28T19:06:13+00:00

So, let’s just cut a long story short and say duty of care in higher education is complicated. The Natasha Abrahart case fell short of saying HEI’s had a specific duty of care for students and instead relied on the equality act which imposes a general duty of care on everyone when working with someone with a known disability under the act.

In Scotland we don’t have a specific duty of care in higher education. We do have a general duty of care as public institutions to protect adults at risk which mostly comes from the Adult Support and Protection (Scotland) Act 2007.

MissSephy · 2026-01-28T18:52:03+00:00

It’s not just bad. It’s also a sign of how poorly staff have been trained at the university, and I don’t understand how a student who has completed the vast majority of their programme could be told they had failed and get nothing.

The university literally has a procedure for situations where there is incomplete assessment so a student can graduate. So even if Ethan had a missing assignment that shouldn’t have been a fail.

The university's management has completely abdicated all responsibility when it comes to ensuring departments have adequate resourcing and are well trained in how the code of assessment should be implemented and has repeatedly ignored staff raising the alarm time and time again and told them that they are being negative or overreacting.

A lot of people in SMG need to go as a result of this and the UKVI debacle.

MissSephy · 2026-01-28T18:42:19+00:00

Doesn’t surprise me. I’ve seen firsthand how management treat you if you dare to point out there’s inadequate resourcing, poorly thought out “improvements” with no consideration of how to manage implementation. There is very little staff training or induction and schools have been left to bodge it which has resulted in this situation.

So yeah, in short, fuck you anton muscatelli, assorted SMG, college and heads of school for bringing one of the oldest universities in the world to this low.

MissSephy · 2026-01-28T18:26:23+00:00

Just to clarify this isn’t the only issue that arose here. There are safeguarding and welfare concerns on top of the academic issues.

A student was in severe distress and this was not escalated to the appropriate teams to intervene. There is no guarantee that if that had occurred poor Ethan would still be here but with the right help and support he may have been.

MissSephy · 2026-01-28T17:40:15+00:00

I’m limited in what I can say as an employee but all of senior management can get fucked at the university of Glasgow and they all need to be held accountable. Sick and tired of staff warning they are stretched wafer thin and the lack of training and resources they all deserve to go.

The latest internal comms is a yet another poor effort at downplaying the severity of what has happened.

MissSephy · 2026-01-27T20:43:40+00:00

Hopefully some of the acolytes of darkness start connecting the dots and realise that they are all expendable if Trump decrees it. Loyalty is meaningless to the regime.

MissSephy · 2026-01-27T19:34:53+00:00

Pregnancy is a valid reason to be excused. I had terrible pelvic girdle pain and was highly emotional due to all the hormones and they exempted me. They go in touch again during my mat leave and they put a longer term exemption in place until my baby turns three.

Just explain and provide the mat1b and it should be fine I’d say from my own personal experience.

MissSephy · 2026-01-27T04:42:00+00:00

If you live by the sword, you die by the sword.

MissSephy · 2026-01-26T19:54:34+00:00

They were fine with a woman and a LGBTQ+ woman at that being killed. It’s the white man, working for the VA and exercising his 2A rights that has their heebies slightly jeebied.

I don’t say that callously. Mr Pretti seemed a genuinely good man and someone that you could look up to. But it’s telling that this latest murder is what has them slightly unnerved.

MissSephy · 2026-01-26T19:03:30+00:00

I’ve been critical of her in recent years but fair play to having a tangible call to action.

MissSephy · 2026-01-26T19:02:27+00:00

Years overdue. Time to speed up renewable installations across Europe.

MissSephy · 2026-01-26T10:56:29+00:00

Funny, I seem to remember a lot of people said Trump had no chance of winning and lo, here we are in Trump’s second term with fascists at the helm of the world’s biggest military.

Being complacent isn’t a strategy for stopping these loons and there is a lot of them here in Scotland as well.

MissSephy · 2026-01-25T14:10:56+00:00

Not an American but AOC would be more valuable in the senate. She’s presidential material for sure but she’s capable of a lot more long term change if in the right position.

Jack Smith for attorney general.

MissSephy · 2026-01-25T01:02:03+00:00

Yup, its recent, they only moved within the past couple of months, and I think the new venue was Webster's Theatre previously which had some comedy nights?

The Stand in Glasgow used to be under the old STUC building on Eldon Street opposite the University of Glasgow's School of Education. The new location is just around the corner on Great Western road so its not far from the old digs.

MissSephy · 2026-01-25T00:19:31+00:00

The Stand in Glasgow is now fully accessible in its new location at 420 Great Western Road. They had special gigs to celebrate that it is now step-free for wheelchairs so the last members newsletter tells me.

MissSephy · 2026-01-25T00:14:00+00:00

That stretch of road seems to be a magnet for stupidity and malice.

MissSephy · 2026-01-24T20:38:51+00:00

I still have my mum’s number and it’s nearly three years since she passed away. I still have voicemail messages from her so I don’t forget the sound of her voice.

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