From Kent to St Andrews, via Salford and Durham, The Hunting Ground – a documentary about sexual assault and rape on US campuses – is being screened across British universities this week. Ahead of it, students will see a film made by the Guardian that reports on the attitudes to and experiences of sex and consent at UK universities. The US film tells the stories of women who became victims and then, in their own words, survivors of rape and sexual assault. It could have been made in the UK.
In the US film, the experience of abuse was made worse by the victims’ shared sense that their universities blamed them rather than their assailant, and that the authorities chose not to take action in order to protect their institutional reputation. Surveys by the Guardian, the Daily Telegraph and the National Union of Students all point to similar experiences in the UK. For many female students, sexual experiences range from the unwelcome to the forced. Yet support for those who are assaulted, even when rape is involved, is too often inadequate. There are two things that could be done quickly and relatively cheaply that could make a significant difference. The first is to require all universities to keep a record of every allegation so that the scale of the problem – what counts – gets counted; at the moment just half of Russell Group universities log incidents. And the second is to radically overhaul personal, sexual and health education (PSHE) in schools.
Last month, two reports – the WHO-backed comparative study of health behaviour in school-aged children, and Girlguiding’s annual survey of its members’ attitudes – showed how teenagers’ personal anxieties are about much more than unwanted pregnancies and sexually transmitted infections: relationships, porn, sexting and cyberbullying have overtaken concerns about drugs, alcohol and how to use a condom. Yet classroom attention to them is often scant, skimpy and starts far too late. PSHE is tacked on to the last term at primary school, long after many children have smartphones and some are already forming relationships. Last February, MPs on the education select committee strongly recommended that all schools, including primaries, should have a statutory obligation to teach it.
The rise of lad culture, and the heavy drinking that often goes with it, is often blamed for women’s experiences (although women can be laddish too): universities are at last clamping down on the pub crawls and drinking games that can make freshers’ week a nightmarish and occasionally a criminally abusive experience. At the weekend, the head of one Cambridge college, Sir Alan Fersht, emailed all students with a powerful denunciation of “laddish” behaviour and “sadistic initiation rites” imposed by one group of second-years. “I fear that these bullies will leave the college and become unethical pariahs like insider traders, exchange rate riggers and corrupt Volkswagen engineers,” he said. But there’s a danger in picking out one group to accuse. The young men who take the unaccustomed freedom and relative affluence of university, need – and according to the Guardian’s film, would like – to be part of the solution. The evidence from Europe is that the better the PSHE classes at school, the later young people start to have sex. Good PSHE puts respect at the heart of every single relationship.
