Stirling students publish sexual violence report challenging university’s award-winning campaign
A University of Stirling student society has published an eye-opening report on student’s experiences of sexual violence despite the university’s award-winning strategy set up in 2017.
The university campaign group, ‘Reclaim Stirling’s findings are based on a survey of 148 former and current students and staff between July and August 2020, ahead of the release of the university’s updated strategy which is due to be published in Spring 2021.
A staggering 79 out of 148 (53.4%) respondents revealed that they had experienced some form of sexual violence or harassment, 62.2% of these incidents went unreported.
When asked how successful they though Stirling’s current #Isthisokay campaign which was recognised by the Herald Higher Education Awards, only 13.5% of respondents described it as ‘successful’ or ‘slightly successful’.
Jess Reid, the author of the report and Stirling University’s Women’s Officer, said:
“ [The #Isitokay campaign] makes you question situations. it’s meant to tackle perpetrators but what they’ve done is put a question into the minds of survivors.
“I think when you have a society when we’re already questioning whether an incident is sexual assault or harassment- you can’t have that.
The Reclaim Stirling campaign was launched in response to five university survivors accounts that were created to anonymously document sexual misconduct on Scottish university campuses in Summer 2020, including one about the University of Stirling campus: ‘Stirling Survivors’.
Miss Reid said: “The survivor pages that cropped up on Instagram really emphasised to me how endemic it [sexual violence] is in Scotland and in Scottish Higher Education.
Initially, Reclaim Stirling campaigned for the #Isitokay campaign to be scrapped but the report has revealed deep-rooted problems within the university’s culture that need to tackled, according to Miss Reid.
The report documents a poor awareness of the campaign, what constitutes sexual violence and misconduct and a lack of confidence in the university’s reporting procedure.
According to one anonymous response in the report, the existence of the Stirling Survivors Instagram page was “a clear example of university negligence”.
Another student survivor said: “It is shameful that women still do not feel safe in a place of education, when it is intended to be a haven of study.
“As a survivor, I have felt fear, shame, disappointment.
“I have been victim blamed and marginalised.
“And each year I become more cynical because there is a lack of effort by large institutions to actually ensure that this happens.
“Tokenism is key within the system- and [the university’s] campaign exemplifies this.”
The report has issued several recommendations to the university which includes making improvements to the current #Isitokay strategy to “readdress the conventional gendered approach” and account for the experiences of its LGBTQ+ and cis-male students who are statistically less likely to report abuse.
Further recommendations were also made from more detailed support to be given to students to guidance for student societies whose members have reported incidents.
Miss Reid has called for a positive collaborative approach with the university but has stressed that it must be open to the recommendations.
She said: “It very much feels like they’re trying to go for a unique approach, their own approach, but it’s not really working- from the report you can see it’s not working.”
In response to the report, Jill Stevenson, Dean for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion at the University of Stirling, said: “Preventing and tackling gender-based violence, and supporting anyone affected by it, remains a priority for the University and Stirling Students’ Union.
“We will give full and thorough consideration to the findings and recommendations of the survey undertaken by Reclaim Stirling.
“I have personally reached out to the authors of the report to discuss the feedback in greater detail and look forward to working with them as we shape our future work in this area.”
In the coming months, Reclaim Stirling will be hosting socially-distanced visual protests and intends to collaborate with other Scottish universities.
As campaign manager of Reclaim Stirling, Miss Reid said: “I want this to become Reclaim Scotland- student-led- by thousands of students across the country to get together to solve this issue because our universities are not doing it.”
To read the report, click here or get involved in the campaign via the Reclaim Stirling website.
