Is 'Lad Culture' A Problem At Universities?

Recently, members of the NUS have conducted research into ‘lad culture’ at universities in the UK, and based on their findings have recommended that efforts be taken to stop it, primarily because it is supposedly sexist. When I first heard about this, my initial reaction was that it was another case of our political-correctness obsessed society trying to stop us from having a bit of fun, but after reading through their report and thinking about my own personal experiences, I have to say I started to come around to their opinion somewhat.

Harmless fun or dangerous sexism?

Now I’m not going to be hypocritical here and will admit that I have participated in elements of ‘lad culture’ myself, but I like to think that what my friends and I do and say is purely for humour, my friends and I never intend for any of what we say or do to be malicious and most of the time we are just having a laugh. I think that most of this so called ‘lad culture’ is just that, people trying to have a bit of fun. But as the report highlights, there comes a point when this goes too far.

The report tells of some pretty horrible instances, which I won’t go into in this article but if you’d like to have a read you can access it here. What these examples did is made me think about how it can be bad when ‘lad culture’ is taken too far and we end up with scenarios where both women and men are actively degraded. But, whilst I agree with some of the issues the report raises, I think its analysis of them is flawed and it may be going about tackling the issues in the wrong way.

It’s all too easy to pin the blame and problems of ‘lad culture’ on one group, such as sports teams, a common candidate and an example frequently used in the report, or to say it’s just men being sexist. The problem lies deeper than that. We now have a society where it’s the norm to participate in ‘lad culture’, and being a ‘lad’ is desirable. A ‘lad’ is something many students want to be (and not just male ones) as it earns respect from their peers and makes them more popular. If it didn’t  people wouldn’t want to be one. It seems to me that the only way to really stop ‘lad culture’ would be to somehow make it unappealing to be a ‘lad’, and based on our current society it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen any time soon.

As to whether ‘lad culture’ is a problem at universities, I think it’s a difficult question to answer. On the one hand, I don’t think that ‘lad culture’ is as bad as the report makes out, and is usually just a case of students trying to have some harmless fun. But, evidently there are instances where it is taken too far and it does glorify some pretty grim things. I think it is more of a question of whether students want it, and clearly ‘lad culture’ has a grasp on student culture that to a certain extent they like. If students don’t mind it, then to be honest it seems a bit pointless to me to kick up a fuss. So unless the student mentality changes, I think that ‘lad culture’ is here to stay.