‘I heard a girl calling for help at a party,’ says Anna*. Three years ago – like thousands of students all over the country this week – she was about to start her final year at university. ‘I pushed open the door and saw a girl lying on the bed crying, while an older student zipped up his jeans and walked out of the room past me with a smirk on his face.’
The girl was a 19-year-old fresher at Cambridge. She’d met the man at a party, and they’d kissed. When he tried to move things further, she refused – he reacted by forcing her to masturbate him.
One week later, Anna, now 23, was in a local club when she came face to face with the girl’s attacker. ‘We were alone outside the toilets – he must have followed me,’ Anna said. ‘He pinned me against the wall, felt my breasts and shoved his hand down my jeans. He walked off laughing and left me standing there shaking with fear.’
Anna’s experience was undoubtedly harrowing – but, sadly, it’s far from unique. Last week, the parents of 22-year old student Hannah Stubbs slammed her university for failing to support her after she was allegedly raped by a fellow undergraduate. Hannah committed suicide following the attack. The tragic news was just one of numerous headlines which underlined the widespread issue of rape, sexual assault and harassment at university.
‘Lad culture’ and sexism have long been considered a prolific and deeply ingrained issue in wider society, but in the bubble of university, it’s often magnified. Statistics released earlier this year purported to show that one in three women attending university have endured sexual assault or unwanted advances, yet the National Union of Students’ (NUS) Lad Culture Audit Report 2015 revealed last week that just 51% of universities have a formal policy on sexual harassment.
An investigation by The Guardian earlier this year found that fewer than half of the most elite universities in Britain actively monitored the ‘extent of sexual violence against students’, along with one in six failing to have specific guidelines for students on how to report allegations of harassment, assault or rape. It means that only an estimated 15% of victims report crimes.
‘I tried to help the girl I found,’ says Anna. ‘I told her we should call the police but she refused, saying she was too upset and embarrassed. I walked her home and gave her my number if she wanted to talk.
'Women have woken up to find a guy on top of them, or that they've been undressed'
‘I haven’t gone to the police myself – I think it will be his word against mine, and I won’t win. When I told my friends, they were horrified, but not shocked because they know as well as I do there’s an undercurrent of sexual violence here.
‘One of them told me a guy she was dating last year, who she thought really liked her, forced her to give him oral sex. He broke up with her the next day and she’d felt too ashamed to tell anyone.’
But many other women have come forward in recent months. Ellie Muffitt is a freelance writer who waived her anonymity to speak out about her alleged sexual assault, after which she suffered post-traumatic stress disorder and left university.
And the abusive behaviour is not just perpetrated by fellow students. Last week, a student filed a complaint that she was sexually harassed by a male professor at Oxford University, amid claims the institute is plagued by an ‘epidemic of harassment’. And last year, an inquest was told how emails sent by a lecturer to Charlotte Coursier, who was studying a post-graduate degree in philosophy at St Edmund Hall, may have contributed – along with her struggle to cope with having an abortion – to her suicide.
‘It’s about power,’ Ann Olivarius, a lawyer who represents women who experience sexual harassment within education and employment, told Grazia. ‘We have six women at Oxford who have complained separately about sexual harassment. Because men have traditionally had so much power over women, there’s a sense of entitlement. So many of the stories are from women who got drunk and woke up to find a guy on top of them, or that they’ve been undressed. There’s a definite blame culture with drinking and “slut-shaming” too.’
Ultimately, ‘lad culture’ is belittling the terms of consent and creating an increasingly volatile environment for women. The NUS Lad Culture report found that, as well as a link between sexist or homophobic behaviour and heavy alcohol consumption, misogynisticjokes, so-called ‘rape-banter’ and pressure to engage in sexual behaviour are an increasingly common problem for students.
But, says Ann, talking about the issue is the first step towards eradicating rape culture. ‘For those who’ve already been hurt, the law can provide recourse. But prevention is obviously the better answer, which means education. Through training, workshops on consent and sex education, starting young, we could turn attitudes around.’
The NUS has called for universities to develop national guidelines – and called out the 94% of institutions who do not include consent in their curriculum, as well as encouraging an improvement on ‘minimal’ training and educational programmes.
In the meantime, for survivors like Anna, speaking out is crucial to highlighting just how harmful sexist attitudes can be. It’s important that women aren’t put off going to university for fear of abuse. We simply can’t allow a generation to miss out on gaining the knowledge, opportunities and positive life experiences it can provide.
‘I stopped going out because I’m afraid of seeing him, and I hated walking anywhere alone,’ Anna says. ‘I went to university for an education, not to be sexually assaulted. But I’ve refused to let what happened hold me back. Now I’m beginning a career I love. I just wish other girls wouldn’t have to go through what I did.’
*Name has been changed