A Just Stop Oil protester who staged a demonstration at the World Snooker Championship and interrupted his own graduation ceremony has been banned by the former university.
25-year-old Edred Whittingham is a frequent Just Stop Oil demonstrator. In April 2023, he caused a stir at the World Snooker Championship when he stood on the snooker table and doused himself in orange powder.
Whittingham has now been expelled from his previous university following more protests during his own graduation from the University of Exeter in July of last year, during which he splattered orange paint over the courtyard and yelled, “Just Stop Oil,” as he was being arrested.
On January 30, 2024, Whittingham got a letter from the University of Exeter advising him that he was no longer permitted to enter the university’s facilities or grounds. The letter from Exeter’s Senior Vice President, Registrar, and Secretary, Mike Shore-Nye, has been shared on X by Just Stop Oil.
Mr. Shore-Nye wrote the following in the letter: “I am writing to advise you that the university has decided to impose an immediate ban on your presence on university grounds due to your activities that contravene our established rules and regulations.”
We have a duty of care to all university users, including staff, students, and visitors, and these events are concerning.
Whittingham is further warned in the letter that any violation will be viewed as trespassing and that “the proper course of measures will be taken.”
Whittingham chose to stage a protest on his own graduation day, ruining his own graduation ceremony, having just gotten his BA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics. Whittingham splattered orange paint on the college courtyard just meters away from his fellow graduates while he was still hearing the sound of his gown and mortarboard, just before he was detained.
Then, when he was loaded into the back of a police van, he was caught on camera grinning.
The 25-year-old stated in a statement before his graduation day protest: “Universities are maintaining a status quo that will kill millions, if not billions, of people instead of educating young people for this inevitable disruption.” I’m urging students everywhere to stand with us in opposition to this criminal government because of this.
Whittingham is a seasoned climate demonstrator who has been detained several times in connection with Just Stop Oil.Whittingham was one of 51 Just Stop Oil demonstrators imprisoned in September 2022 after they closed the Kingsbury Oil Terminal under a High Court injunction.
In July 2022, he was also taken into custody after adhering his hand to a picture at the Manchester Art Gallery.
In order to finance his environmental protests, Whittingham also uses crowdsourcing. He asks for donations by stating, “I have been arrested six times in a year and have spent a week in prison.” Keep me afloat, please.
The environmentalist has also made the shocking claim that he cannot guarantee that there will be a habitable planet for his children to grow up on, which is why he is against having children “on moral grounds.”
“I think it’s the moral choice, given the conditions we are facing,” he said to GB News.
He continued by saying that, “if we don’t sort out the climate catastrophe,” he believed it to be morally immoral to have children.
Whittingham, who is originally from Cambridge, was raised in a semi-detached house worth £600,000 and has two brothers and a sister. Hannes, one of the brothers, works as a senior data scientist at AstraZeneca and donated 5% of his income to a fund that fights global warming last year.
Whittingham’s father merely said “goodbye” and refrained from commenting on his son’s career in protest or jail after Whittingham targeted the snooker in 2023. Kindly vacate the premises.
