After events of last month, we were encouraged to reflect on the direction of our campaign and the way that perhaps in our focus on policy, we’d slightly neglected the cultural change that is necessary alongside this. This month therefore, we’ve been looking into what a cultural change and rape culture mean and different aspects of their importance/ prevalence such as language, jokes and what universities can do to do their part. The Guardian explored how currently, not much seems to be changing - using us as a source! Read it here: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/may/16/universities-rape-culture-on-campus-students-protest
Since our campaign started, we have been researching sexual misconduct policies at various UK universities. We believe that having such policies is a vital step towards tackling rape culture on campus: it outlines what sexual misconduct is, why it’s unacceptable, and also acts as an accountability tool for the universities themselves. If such a policy is in place, institutions must enforce it. Otherwise, students have the right to lodge a formal complaint, either with their uni or with an independent watchdog. Therefore, policies should hopefully lead to good practice. In total, we’ve researched 41 institutions. We’ve done this in our free time, outside of work, uni, study and generally trying to get through this pandemic.
The last week in May saw us complete our policy report, summarising our research so far. We are now proud to say that we will be hosting a launch event for this report, to share our findings and further advocate for universities to do better.
We’ll be co-hosting with ProtectED, a not-for-profit org that aims to safeguard student experiences and also has a keen focus on tackling sexual misconduct. Over the last few months the organisation has provided us with invaluable support behind the scenes and we couldn’t be more excited to host this event with them.
Learn more about ProtectED here: https://www.protect-ed.org/
And do join us for our report launch event on 17 June at 5pm.
To view the event details in full, please visit our Facebook page or view our EventBrite link: https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/the-reclaim-report-a-student-analysis-on-sexual-misconduct-policies-tickets-154276313607
Love, RTC