It Still Happens Here

Image: Jade Correa

Would you know where to turn if you experienced sexual violence? I suspect most people wouldn’t. I spend a fair bit of my time talking and writing about sexual violence, and for a long time I wasn’t sure where to go, either – to be honest, I’m still not sure I’m completely certain. And there’s another, more troubling question that links to my first. Would you turn to anyone at all if you experienced sexual violence? Do you trust that your claim would be taken seriously by your college, the University, even the police? I certainly wouldn’t be surprised if your answer to any of those questions was no.

It’s these issues, among many others, that It Happens Here Durham is trying to tackle as it works with the University, particularly the Sexual Violence Task Force. We’re a relatively new group, forming with only two members in 2012; we’ve only been a society for a year.  Nevertheless, we have huge aims for Durham. Our three key goals are for the University to have a transparent sexual violence policy, better signposting for those seeking support, and mandatory training for members of staff, particularly those whose jobs require a degree of pastoral care.

The first goal brings us back quite nicely to my original question. It is clear that sexual violence is happening at university at an alarming rate: the most recent NUS report on the subject stated that one in seven female students experience serious sexual or physical assault at some point in their university life. Of those students, a total of 14% report their assault to their institution or the police, with the remaining students not reporting because they felt embarrassed or ashamed, or were worried that they would be blamed. The impression I get at Durham in particular is that the lack of a clear sexual violence policy, or a guide on where to go, might also be a significant issue. With the stigma that already surrounds sexual violence, might it not be discouraging to have no clear idea of who to go to for help?

A clear policy is something that should interest the University and its students alike. As well as providing a better procedure for dealing with victims of sexual violence, it might too offer ways of dealing with the perpetrators. Unfortunately, we live in a country as a whole where it is often the victims who are uprooted from their university halls, or are forced to find a different route to lectures, for fear of meeting their attacker on campus. It should be the responsibility of each university to ensure that both parties remain separated during any investigation of sexual violence, and it should not be up to the complainant to take extra measures to make sure that this is the case.

Policies take a long time to make, and the controversies and the ins and outs surrounding sexual violence makes the process more complicated and time-consuming. But there is still more the university can do in the meantime. It Happens Here’s second goal – to secure better signposting for victims of sexual violence – is perhaps the easiest to achieve. After all, everyone has the Nightline number on the back of their campus cards, and it has its own little section on DUO and the University website. It takes some searching, but mental health resources, too, are quite readily available, with the counselling service in particular being advertised through emails. Why, then, do sexual violence resources not have this same status? Considering the impact it has on students’ wellbeing, their mental health, and their academic performance, surely it is in the University’s best interests to provide a couple of links, maybe even a few phone numbers?

That’s what we’re trying to do at the moment. We’d like to see a section on DUO with the contact details of Rape Crisis and clinics in the local area. Ideally, we’d love to run a poster campaign around the Student Union, the library and other University buildings with details of how to get help. In the meantime, our own website has resources for anyone who needs them, including much-needed details of how to help a friend.

Finally, our third goal is about training. It’s about raising awareness of sexual violence and how to deal with it within the integral structures of the university. We believe that mandatory training should take place for anyone in a position where they might be approached by someone who has experienced sexual violence. This way, it will help reduce the chain of people involved in a single enquiry, ensuring greater privacy for the victim and decreasing the delay. Our opinion is that education on sexual violence should form part of everyone’s initiation into the University, too: after all, we have to complete a plagiarism tutorial and sit through police safety talks, so why shouldn’t sexual violence deserve a slot, too?

There will always be the cries of ‘but I know what consent is! I am not a perpetrator!’ of course; but equally, most Durham students would know what does and doesn’t constitute a fire hazard, and we still sit through fifteen minutes of fire safety talks during Freshers’ Week. If not to teach students something new about sexual violence – although you’ll be surprised to realise how much more there is to learn – then such talks serve to raise awareness of the issue, at least. Consent workshops will never be popular amongst the entire student body – although the ones we have run over the past year have been happily successful – but a talk on what sexual violence is, and how not to be a perpetrator, can hardly set one back in life.

Since I joined It Happens Here, I have realised how much more the University still needs to do for sexual violence. I am proud to have been part of a campaign that has raised awareness over the past few years, following the ever-growing trajectory of wider media coverage and, lately, even gaining traction in our own student publications. It seems that the student body is finally waking up to an issue more dangerous than river safety, more prevalent than muggings in the street. The University should wake up too. If you have experienced sexual violence, or even if you know someone who has, then you already know that Durham is much less safe than it supposes itself to be. I hope that our student campaign, however small it may be, can continue to work with the University and the Sexual Violence Task Force to provide a safer and more reliable space in which to study and live.

For more information on It Happens Here and what we do, please find us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter (@DU_HappensHere) or visit our website: www.ithappensheredurham.wordpress.com

Originally published on Palatinate.

10 Ways You Know You're A Durham Student

1.) Anything longer than a five minute walk feels like a ten mile hike.

2.) You use an acronym at least once in every conversation.

3.) You’ve said ‘I don’t even care if I don’t get a first any more’ with the knowledge that you’re definitely lying.

4.) You’ve vowed never to step foot in Klute again, only to be found there dancing to ‘That’s Amore’ at closing time a week later.

5.) You’ve developed thighs of steel from all the hills you have to walk up every day.

6.) You’ve spent the entire day in your room because if you went anywhere else, it’d be too much effort to come back for lunch.

7.) At least half the people you see on the walk to your lecture are wearing stash.

8.) You live in awe of the few people who have completed a full-college bar crawl because you can’t even be bothered to walk up past Collingwood.

9.) You’ve blagged your way through a conversation at a law event just to get to the free food.

10.) You’ve met at least one person who apologises, unprovoked, for being from Hatfield. 

Originally published on Her Campus.

Why they didn't tell the university

Photograph: It Happens Here Durham

Trigger warning: rape, sexual violence and abuse, alchol abuse. Contains content some readers may find upsetting.

One in seven female students is a victim of serious sexual or physical assault. One in four is a victim of sexual violence in general. Ten percent of these students have reported the assault to the police, and only four percent to their university.

These figures, taken from an NUS ‘Hidden Marks’ survey in 2010, don’t include male survivors of sexual assault: even without these additional statistics, they depict a worrying cultural trend. Whilst sexual violence is disturbingly prevalent, the majority of survivors appear to feel unable to report their attacks to their institutions. Since its publication, the NUS report has sparked conversations in universities around the UK about the level of support offered to survivors of sexual violence and abuse, and about the quality of education that institutions are offering about the issue. It is becoming clear that universities – including Durham – need to offer more in the way of support and advice.

The survey also draws attention to the reasons why the other ninety-six percent of female students didn’t report their attackers: half said it was because they felt ashamed or embarrassed, and forty-three percent thought they would be blamed for what happened. Laura*, a former student who agreed to talk to Palatinate, said that she didn’t tell the university because she felt she wasn’t a ‘good victim’ – ‘I came to university really vulnerable because of lots of things that happened in my life before.’ She became involved in an abusive relationship. ‘I was raped and sexually assaulted a number of times both by him and by multiple other men. I reported the last rape, but I didn’t tell the university, partly because I was about to leave and partly because I don’t think he was a student. All the other sexual violence was from other students who were known to me. I couldn’t tell because I was convincing myself I could cope with it. I told myself I deserved it and could handle it myself.’

It has become clear over recent years that we need to create a supportive, compassionate environment at university which reaches out to survivors. This environment should include a network of people who are trained to deal specifically with sexual violence and support survivors in a positive, constructive way. ‘I can’t imagine how you would just go and tell all of this to a college tutor who has no experience in sexual violence,’ said Laura, of her own experiences. ‘The questions over why I had willingly sought out sex with a stranger, why I’d stayed in a relationship with a man who raped me, why I was abusing alcohol, why I was compliant with some of the violence – as a vulnerable, confused twenty-year-old, I didn’t even have the answers myself.’

Durham’s approach to sexual violence and abuse is changing with the introduction of sexual violence awareness campaigns, particularly the introduction of It Happens Here Durham. The organisation was set up with the aim of educating students about sexual violence and creating a safe place for all members of the community. Since its launch in September 2013, the organisation has led discussions about sexual assault and prompted change in and around the university, and its network of organisers has grown dramatically in recent months. It is creating a culture that gives survivors more options, better support, and a chance to share their story.

Working closely with the university to establish a clear, coherent policy on helping survivors, It Happens Here hopes to explore options for raising awareness about sexual violence and supporting students more directly. The group is using the most powerful tool available at university – the student voice – to initiate action and instigate change. Their hope is that Durham University will continue to engage in discussion and commit to change alongside the campaign. They firmly believe that it is the university’s duty to work to create a culture that supports survivors and educates the student body: It Happens Here, and its affiliated organisations, is the medium through which such a culture can be created.

For more information on the ‘It Happens Here’ campaign and how you can help, visit http://ithappensheredurham.wordpress.com, their Facebook page, or follow them on Twitter (@DU_HappensHere).

*Names have been changed.

Originally published on Palatinate Online. 

Linda Grant at the Durham Book Festival 2014

Linda Grant’s conversation with Caroline Beck at Durham Book Festival is far beyond a simple discussion of Grant’s newest novel, Upstairs at the Party. It is, instead, a funny and thoughtful insight into some of the most radical ideas of the early to mid-seventies.  Grant talks of this era as a time when students were “lab rats in an experimental pool” – given total liberty, free of adult interference and support – at a campus that is quite clearly the University of York, in all but name. Beneath this freedom, however, is a darker assessment of the profound impact university life can have on its students. In the hour Grant has with the audience, she addresses themes such as responsibility, blame and mental illness to highlight student issues in the seventies that clearly resonate strongly with her own experiences.

Photograph: Durham Book Festival, via Palatinate

Humorous, casual and perceptive, Grant’s talk is littered with anecdotes of her own time at university: telling familiar stories of the horrors of student accommodation, the struggle to define oneself in a new environment, and the importance of strong friendships. But between these stories, Grant voices her opinion on a number of sensitive topics.

Her novel is focused around a defining point in the narrative where something happens ‘upstairs at the party’ that will stay with the characters for their whole lives. She does not make clear what this event is, but her focus throughout the evening on the issues of mental illness and an unsupportive university system allows audience members to make an educated guess. Her novel’s narrator, Adele, looks back on this crucial moment with mixed feelings of responsibility, guilt, and blame, and Grant uses this narrative device to highlight her own memories of her university years: as she tells the audience, “there is nothing so distant as the recent past.”

A funny and thoughtful insight into some of the most radical ideas of the early to mid-seventies

Grant appeared to be looking towards her characters’ futures, highlighting some of the issues prevalent in an era that exists only as an implied future in her novel – namely, the 1980s and 1990s, where AIDS was becoming a widespread problem. Adele meets several advocates of sexual experimentation during her time as a student, not least an openly gay character called Bobby. Whilst Bobby appears to embody the freedom given to students to choose and express their individual identities, Grant was well aware of the AIDs epidemic about to overwhelm the gay community. She tells the audience that her time at university was one where “nothing could harm us”; Bobby’s sexual freedom, however, serves by implication as a powerful reminder of the potentially dangerous lifestyle he would later be exposed to.

Upstairs at the Party isn’t just a vivid and vibrant dialogue about student life in the seventies but also a reminder that issues such as mental health and the struggle for a definitive identity are dangers that all young people face, whatever their generation. Grant ends the discussion on a poignant note when she states that “every generation finds a new set of problems,” and perhaps this is why Upstairs at the Party has been greeted with such promising reviews: it is a funny, saddening and reflective novel inviting empathy from readers of all generations.

Originally published at Palatinate Online.