POLICE probed reports of a hate crime at a Hampshire university.

The incident at the University of Southampton involved documents being tampered with to include racial slurs and abusive language.

Now a student who saw the spreadsheet has changed university - and said the incident made him think “do I really want to be here?”

David Tyoember was a first year student in electronics and computer science at the time of the incident.

An open online document used by an academic as part of David’s course was “defaced in a racist and sexually offensive manner”, according to a university spokesperson.

David said he felt “attacked” by the incident. He told a national news outlet: “Did I pick the wrong uni? It did make me think a lot.”

David has now moved to study chemistry at Imperial College in London.

He also criticised the university for trying to “appease” people who were angry about it, instead of focusing on “what could be done to find out who did it”.

A university spokesperson said it “immediately launched a formal internal investigation” - and said if found the perpetrator could be thrown off their degree course.

They added: “No one was specifically targeted by the perpetrator(s) who tampered with the document but David was amongst the cohort for whom the document was originally set up.

“The University of Southampton took this matter extremely seriously. Staff removed the offensive material within 15 minutes of being alerted.

“The university launched an urgent internal investigation and informed the police. The university has a zero tolerance policy against racist and other forms of offensive behaviour.”

The incident happened in October but has only now come to light.

A police spokesperson said: “We were contacted on October 31 by an employee of the University of Southampton reporting a hate crime that had occurred in an online forum for students.

“It was reported that someone accessed the forum and posted written material intended or likely to stir up racial hatred.

“Due to how the forum was accessed, we were unable to identify a suspect and no further action was taken at this time.

“We liaised with the university and discussed measures that would prevent this from happening again in the future.”