Coroner's warning of cancel culture after student suicide

A coroner has called on the government to examine the prevalence of "cancel culture" on university campuses, after ruling that a 20-year-old Oxford student took his own life after being "ostracised" by his peers.

- ANDY GREGORY

Alexander Rogers, a third-year studying materials science at Corpus Christi College, died in January. His body was recovered from the River Thames, and he was found to have suffered a head trauma.

Following an inquest into his death, a coroner has now ruled that “in the preceding days Alexander had been ostracised” and “his distress at this led him to form an intention to take his own life”, while noting that “suicide arises often from a complex interplay of factors”. Mr Rogers, from Salisbury, had been isolated by his peers and friends after a former partner “expressed discomfort over a sexual encounter” on 11 January, the ruling states.

He had written to friends expressing “remorse for his actions and a belief that they were unintentional but unforgivable”, the coroner said. He was reported missing to police on 15 January by a concerned peer, and his body was recovered by fire and police crews that afternoon. Mr Rogers’s family said in a statement that, for him, “the rational became the irrational, and he ended what could have been a beautiful life”.