Protestors on Uni of Nottingham campus demand mandatory consent training for students

The protest was organised by Sexpression Nottingham

1 year ago

The Univerity of Nottingham’s womens network and Sexpression Nottingham organised a mandatory consent training campaign rally on University Park campus yesterday.

The protestors were calling for UoN to make consent training mandatory for all students entering the university.

Nottingham Trent University already has mandated consent training for all students, with first-year undergraduate students having to undertake an online course on consent in either their first or second term. In September 2021, 6000 students took part in their “consent is everything” workshop.

The rally began at 12pm in the Trent building, and made its way across campus, ending at the Portland building at 2pm.

via @sexpression.nottingham on Instagram

In a statement posted on their Instagram, they said: “We are calling for UoN to make consent training mandatory. This is to ensure that all students entering university will be briefed on what consent is, how to apprehend when you are being coerced into committing sexual acts that you don’t want to do and how to report sexual violence.

“With such education, students have no reason to turn around with the excuse that they didn’t realise their sexual partner was consenting to sex. If they weren’t already aware, they will be made to be.

“Rape unfortunately occurs everywhere, so the implementation of this training scheme means that we are taking a step in the right direction to ensure the safety of all students at university. Consent applies to everyone so it should be protected.”

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by UoN Women*'s Network (@uonsu_womensnetwork)

Sexpression Nottingham, the society who co-organised the protest is a fairly new society, being set up in the summer of 2020. Sexpression is a national charity that aims to educate about sex, bodily changes, consent, and safer sex. This is conducted through peer volunteering in schools, university consent workshops and campaigns such as this to make consent training mandatory.

Katherine Linehan, Pro-Vice-Chancellor for Equality, Diversity, Inclusion and People, said: “Everyone in our community should feel safe at all times from any form of harassment or misconduct.

“We educate our staff and students on the standards of behaviour we expect and promote safety and awareness initiatives such as Stronger Together and Shoulder to Shoulder (gendered sexual and domestic violence) to protect our community against sexual misconduct. This term we are piloting a new style of consent training as part of Stronger Together and including training on misogyny and hate crime written by leading academics.

“The pilot, delivered to student mobile phones, is aimed at making these resources as accessible as possible to drive engagement.

“Over the next year we are also piloting face-to-face consent training through sports clubs and societies as we know that peer-to-peer learning can be the most impactful way of influencing values and behaviours but we are always open to conversations about how this can be better achieved. We also work closely with our Students’ Union to deliver active bystander training to students to raise awareness of these issues and find ways for them to safely challenge inappropriate behaviour and support one another to be safe.”

Protestors on Uni of Nottingham campus demand mandatory consent training for students

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