Firstly, thank you for inviting me here today to talk to you all about an issue that NUS has worked for years to bring to national attention. It's an honour to be able to have the chance to speak on behalf of the generations of student activists that have paved the way to this point in time where people in the highest positions are listening and willing to make the important changes to make UK campuses safer from sexual harassment, assault and lad culture.
The reason why tackling lad culture has been a key aspect of the women's campaign for years is because we believe that as long as misogyny, harassment and sexual violence are normalised as part of the student experience, women students do not have equal access to university education.
In 2010 we focused on the presence of sexual harassment and assault on campus, launching the Hidden Marks, the first ever nationwide report into women students’ experience of harassment, stalking, violence and sexual assault - a report which revealed that 1 in 7 women students that had experienced a serious physical or sexual assault during their time as a student.
In doing so, we discovered that in order to properly tackle sexual harassment and assault on campus, we must acknowledge that this behaviour is in fact sustained within a wider problematic culture that exists on campuses across the UK, commonly known as lad culture. This was defined by students in our 2013 report "That's What She Said" as group or ‘pack’ mentality residing in activities such as sport, heavy alcohol consumption and ‘banter’ which was often sexist, misogynistic, racist or homophobic. A sexualized culture which involves the objectification of women and rape-supportive attitudes, and occasionally spilling over into sexual harassment and violence.
Some of you will argue that lad culture and sexism exist everywhere. I agree, that is true. However we would be lying to ourselves if we didn't acknowledge there's something about the university campus, the invasion of young people, first time living away from home, the peer pressure from other students to drink excessively, to have sex with as many people as possible - We would be lying if we didn't acknowledge that there is something in the makeup of the student experience itself that contributes to a specific type of atmosphere that made sexual violence against women students appear normal.
I doubt there's a university in the UK who wouldn't say that they didn't take sexual harassment and assault seriously or that they didn't have robust reporting systems. However the lad culture audit report that we launched earlier this year showed that a large majority of universities lacked the policy, training education and support services to actively tackle lad culture and sexual violence.
And in our lad culture and sexism survey this year, 61% of students stated that they were not made aware of any codes of conduct and 66% stated they were not aware of the procedure to report these incidents. For me, the proof of how much universities take these issues seriously, or how robust their systems claim to be is shown in the treatment of student survivors themselves.
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