New Year, New Rules: Sexism in Nottingham

The first weeks of term have well and truly come to an end. The babyfaced freshers have lost their Ocean v-cards and met Hallward Library – their future home – for the first time, and us returners have been reunited with Nottingham after months of absence.

University is a place to grow, learn, and maybe most importantly, have a ton of fun. Unfortunately, for many students in Nottingham and across the UK, university life is not all fun and games. A shocking number of women have encountered sexism at some point during their time at university, with Freshers’ Week accused more and more of promoting a sexist culture. Inspired by the hugely popular Everyday Sexism Project and curious of the state of equality on our own campuses, we sat with the founder of the project and Nottingham University’s own Women’s officers.

So, ‘just a bit of fun’, or outright sexism? Her Campus Nottingham investigates.

Laura Bates, the founder of the project, which now has over 20,000 entries on the website and nearing 100,000 followers on Twitter, says that, “sexism at university is still a major problem according to the thousands of people who have reported their experiences to the Everyday Sexism Project. From Freshers’ Week events requiring female students to carry out highly sexualised initiation rituals or pressuring them into activities like taking their clothes off, to a wider sexist culture that involves treating female students as sexual prey, making sexist jokes, and much more.”

She continues, “We know that not all students are like this, and indeed that it is a problem that can affect male students too. But with the influence of websites like the Lad Bible and Confessions and Spotted Facebook pages focusing heavily on objectifying, humiliating and degrading female students, it is an issue that disproportionately affects young women.”

For The University of Nottingham, the role of Freshers’ Week in the continuing of campus inequality is one that they acknowledge, tweeting prior to the beginning of term that: “There’s no place for #FreshersWeekSexism here. Uni and UoN Student Union won’t tolerate it, neither should our students”. That hashtag took on a life of its own, with hoards current students and graduates directly asking their Unis what they were doing to tackle the issue in the run-up to that oh-so infamous week about to commence across the country.

Nottingham’s Women’s Officers Nina and Krishna assure that “we are well aware of much of the sexism that happens to women students on campus,” and that for their position “the main aim is to tackle sexism amongst and faced by women students.”

Unfortunately this year hasn’t gotten off to a brilliant start. University Park’s Sherwood and Lincoln Halls came under fire after their Twitter accounts claiming to be official  featured pornographic images and tweets such as: “’Freshers’ week won’t be the only time I will be visiting Freshers’ rooms – #comeatmegirls’ #frehers (sic)  #young’uns.” (It is not clear whether the Twitter accounts were official and affiliated with the University or the halls of residence in question. The Twitter accounts have since been deleted).

Laura spoke of how this year’s Freshers’ week “saw a really positive step from many institutions, with a lot of very sexist events with names like ‘Slag and Drag’ or ‘CEOs and Corporate Hoes’ cancelled, many universities instating zero tolerance policies on sexual harassment and many including information about sexism in welcome packs and talks”.

Nina and Krishna agree and are optimistic for the forthcoming year where they “will be putting [their] efforts into a Zero Tolerance campaign, tackling ‘lad culture’ and running workshops on gender inequalities. We are here for women students who have experienced sexism as a student, and we also welcome other ideas on how to go about combating sexism.”

Tweet us at @HCNottingham with your thoughts. Have you experienced sexism whilst at University? What are your thoughts on the link between sexism and Freshers’ Week? We want to know what you think!

More information:

UoN’s Women’s Network: http://www.su.nottingham.ac.uk/getinvolved/network/womensnetwork/ or https://www.facebook.com/groups/256709654363118/

The Everyday Sexism Project: http://everydaysexism.com/

Edited by Caroline Chan.

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