In response to an online magazine’s effort to rank censorship at British universities, members of CUSU Women’s Campaign have set up a satirical Facebook event aimed at banning its editor from campuses.

Spiked Online yesterday morning published its first Free Speech University Rankings (FSUR), giving each university in the UK a traffic-light rating, where red means that the university or its student union has “banned and actively censored ideas on campus” and green indicates a “hands-off approach” to speech.

According to the rankings, Cambridge (ranked ‘amber’) has had a “chilling environment” created through the actions of the university, the colleges and CUSU. The university itself is rated green, while CUSU received an amber rating for its safe space policy, the official boycott of The Sun newspaper and for endorsing the NUS zero-tolerance policy on sexual harassment.

In response, Amelia Horgan, the CUSU Women’s Officer, and five other activists have set up a Facebook event for 1st April (April Fools’ Day) called “BAN BRENDAN O’NEILL DAY”. The event admits it has “no official support from SUs as of yet”, but proposes that motions be submitted to student unions “making it literally illegal to be Brendan O'Neill [the editor of Spiked] on campus.”

Writing for Times Higher Education in January, Tom Slater, who co-ordinated the Spiked survey, wrote that in British universities “Safety has been downgraded to mean intellectual comfort – something no institute of learning should promote.”

Speaking to Varsity, Mr Slater said: "The response to the FSUR has been fantastic. This debate has been dodged for too long. Campus censorship has become so ingrained, so routine, that even those who oppose it would rather just leave the self-righteous censors to it. But this has helped to force the issue and make students, on either side of the debate, respond. Free speech is all about the clash of ideas. Here's hoping we can truly have this out."

As to the 'Ban Brendan O'Neill' page, Mr Slater added: "Brendan wouldn't [sic] rather not comment. But someone should tell them that satire is supposed to be funny."