#Fresher’s Week Sexism

The Union has just made some very impressive, if vague, promises to combat the ‘Lad Culture’ that comment writers in The Guardian and The Telegraph alike have been making money out of, by standing on their soapboxes and condemning lairy rugby players.

However, what good are words from Kallum Taylor and WomCom, saying that binge drinking and ‘Lad Culture’ are unacceptable, on blogs that only student media hacks and YUSU obsessives with nothing else to do will read, when Freshers’ week is possibly the worst environment – bar sports initiations – for sexist behaviour and vomming in Willow? It seems like YUSU are once again doing what they do best; listing out some vague aims that they can never hope to accomplish, in order to pacify the campus activists and sooth Freshers – when in reality nothing will change.

We come to University and are shoved into a flat with a bunch of new people who we want to impress; mentored by a pair of particularly keen second or third years willing us to play Ring of Fire and partake in banter. We are then shoved into clubs together, in varying degrees of frivolity and undress, completely off our faces with people we’ve known for less than a week and desperately either want to shag or impress. Encouraging students to tweet about their experiences is an unrealistic cop-out; sure, the Everyday Sexism Project is a fantastic way of highlighting and documenting the sexism in our culture, but it is just showing us what we need to change – and that there is in fact a problem, rather than being a solution in itself.

In reality, many students will be too intimidated to come forward and publicly state that their peers have done something sexist or wrong at a time when they are desperate to impress and make new friends. In addition, getting STYCs to sign a piece of paper saying that they’re going to tackle sexism is again a piece of bureaucracy that’s not going to be at all helpful – they also sign one saying that they’re not going to sleep with the freshers or encourage binge drinking and we all know how well that goes. If YUSU wanted to actually change the sexism and lad culture which happens not just in Freshers’ week but throughout our time at university, they’d do more than just jumping on a Twitter bandwagon and writing a blog.

They’d make constructive changes instead of merely writing 300 words to save face. They’d work with the University and nightclubs to put standards and sanctions in place – think of the difference between WomCom putting up a poster about drink spiking, and going into clubs and putting pegs on drinks which have been left unattended. The poster raises awareness – for those who actually read it, but the pegs on drinks could potentially save someone from being spiked. It’s the same issue here.

Perhaps instead of encouraging freshers to tweet YUSU; giving YUSU a pat on the back and a public way to save face, YUSU could point on their blog towards the, admittedly lacking, University services which students can confidentially report sexual harassment to. Alternatively they could encourage freshers to speak to their STYCs or welfare teams when they feel uncomfortable with the way in which they’re acting, or want to report something.

STYCs, after all, aren’t 
just there to be drinking buddies. They’re primarily there for support – perhaps that’s something that YUSU and our Colleges can ‘raise awareness’ about. YUSU aren’t just there to be a presence on Twitter – they are there, supposedly, to support students, especially our new freshers. They’re there to promote services such as Open Door, Nightline and the Harassment services rather than just promoting themselves and giving themselves something to retweet.

So, Twitter campaigning is all very well. Writing blogs about sexism is so much better than doing nothing. However, the Union does have a massive amount of power and influence that it isn’t currently using, and that’s upsetting. Maybe I’m being cynical, but the way in which they’re making the reporting process for sexism massively public and jumping on the Twitter bandwagon seems like they are saving face rather than protecting freshers from sexual harassment.