Diversity, safe spaces and inclusivity

Yesterday, I went to a protest, I did not really want to be there but I had to.

Sexual harrasment and assaults happen around us and the University does not do enough to make our campus a safe space.

The UoE treatment of gender-based violence is appalling and insufficient. To give you a broad idea, it is mainly treated as a personal conflict, with no equality of treatment for the parties. If you are brave enough to put a complaint in, in the first stage, an investigator will get in touch with you and interview you and then your aggressor. Your name, address and testimony will be provided to your aggressor and they will have a right to reply to everything you said. You do not have access to their version. The investigator then concludes the investigation and you are notified of the conclusion of the decision (no timeline is provided). Then a board (with no information regarding the composition or training of its members) asses the investigator’s conclusion, interviews your aggressor and gives a decision. You are not informed as a victim of this decision, you then have to go and live your life alongside your aggressor, with no mechanisms to protect you and complete secrecy around the case. No one is made aware, so you can not be helped even by people who could potentially protect you. Most likely, you would have been better off not reporting! And this is how my friend you sustain a rape culture on campus!

If what I wrote is hard to believe, then I encourage you to read the open letter written by the fantastic sexoncampus association such as Sexoncampus.