No mercy for sex pests at Wadham

Students vote overwhelmingly to back national campaign against harassment despite President’s objections


Wadham kept up its progressive image as yesterday’s first SU meeting of term saw students approve a zero tolerance approach to sexual harassment in the college.

The motion was inspired by a two year old NUS campaign started in response to a 2010 survey which found that 1 in 7 women had been the victims of sexual assault or serious sexual violence while at university.

The NUS is running the Zero Tolerance campaign

On the NUS website, Women’s Officer Olivia Bailey comments:

‘Women students can be left feeling like they are to blame for the violence committed against them. Clearly, not enough is being done to encourage women students to report all instances of assault or harassment to their institutions or to the police.’

Wadhamites debated the topic for over an hour, with a focus on the college’s social events.  The motion eventually passed with a two thirds majority.

Now any individual simply accused of sexual harassment during a college event- such as next Saturday’s Wadstock music festival- will be ejected by security.

Some students were worried about what increased or more vigilant security might mean for the college’s proudly liberal events such as Queerfest.

Anti-harassment measure will kick in for Saturday’s Wadstock festival

Others questioned whether Wadham has what it takes to stand apart from the British judicial system in rejecting the established concept of ‘innocent until proven guilty’.

SU President Jahnavi Emmanuel told the Tab last night:

‘The points raised for the motion focused around the difficulties for victims of sexual harassment and the fact that they should never be made to feel that they have falsely accused someone or that their problem is not being taken seriously.’

Presiding over  events in a onesie, as mandated by students in one of their lighter moods, Emmanuel looked somewhat ridiculous.

A minority of onesie? SU President Emmanuel did not support the motion

Her own opinion conflicted with that of the majority ruling.

‘Personally, I think that although anything relating to sexual harassment is an extremely sensitive issue and should be handled with care and delicacy, the idea of overriding an innocent-until-proven-guilty policy by instantly ejecting anyone accused from an event is difficult to justify.

‘But, that said the decision of the SU overall was a clear majority so we’ll be putting this policy into action immediately.’