Exeter is reclaiming the night

Our survey recently revealed over 40 per cent of girls said they’d been sexually assaulted.

Although not representative of the whole of Exeter’s student body, 224 Exeter respondents gave an insight into our mindset on sexual assault.

The survey results were also reported amidst student calls for the university’s #NeverOK campaign to be promoted again in this new academic year.

In light of this, we took a look at the anti-sexual assault movements working within Exeter. Movements aimed at making us all feel that little bit safer after we’ve left the club after a loose and lairy one on a TP Friday.

If you’re a frequent Facebook lurker, you may have seen the page “Spotted: Sexism at Exeter University”.

The page  started as an online community where people could share their stories about sexism, with the aim of raising awareness about how commonplace it is.

A spokesperson for the page said: “I think that’s important because many people just don’t realise that this sort of thing happens every day – women don’t realise that this happens to other women regularly, too, and men don’t realise that causal sexism and being harassed when out and about is part of most women’s daily lives.”

This corresponds with what a few of you said in our survey, where anonymous comments included “groping a girl’s ass in a club is sexual assault.

If you scroll through their posts on the page, most incidents happen in Exeter clubs.

We also asked whether they the anonymity of the page was key to its popularity, “I think the anonymity of the page does make people feel safer. Many of our messages are from people who want to be assured that it is completely anonymous before they share their story, for fear that there will be repercussions from the person it concerns.”

An important point was also highlighted,  “It’s also helpful to point out that harassment can also affect men – we’ve had a number of submissions concerning that.”

We also spoke to “Voice”, the Exeter student night line about the safety of students walking home at night.

They weren’t able to give us exact statistics on how many calls they get post-club in the evenings, but they did say: “We’ve found callers have felt safer having someone on the other end of the line, as they’re able to tell someone where they are if anything happens. Sometimes people aren’t able to get through to friends late at night, so it can also just be nice to have a friendly voice on the other end of the phone.”

So the next time you’re stumbling home drunk, cheesy chips in hand and your Exeter mandem, including your friend with benefits don’t pick up, you know who to call.