Image credit: https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/ssid/wellbeing
In my first week of uni, I was ‘invited’ to a mandatory consent workshop. We sat in a circle of chairs, alternately hungover and overwhelmed, while the two final-year students leading the session looked us up and down. This was a safe space, they told us. We were welcome to share our own experiences if we felt moved to do so, though we should be mindful of ‘triggering’ the other participants. They then launched into a presentation of carefully gender neutral scenarios designed, superficially at least, to make us think. “If person A touches person B’s genitals, and person B doesn’t say anything, what should person A do?” It transpired that person A should explicitly ask for and receive verbal consent at every stage of the encounter. If they didn’t then they were a predator (we should probably just throw away the key.)
Naively, and in spite of everyone else’s frozen silence throughout, I decided to ‘share.’ I explained that I’d consented to things in the past, explicitly and implicitly, without really wanting to (or even knowing why I was doing it at the time.) Perhaps the men involved weren't totally blameless (I’m still not really sure), but I didn’t think they were predators or rapists - and it didn’t help me to think of them in that way. I had had the power in those situations to say no, but I hadn’t exercised it. The next time I was in one of those situations, I wanted to remind myself that I could. There was a silence that stretched on for several seconds, while the group leaders looked at me with cool incredulity. “Mm,” one of them said at last, and we moved on.
I was reminded of this recently when a friend at the University of Sheffield told me about a new initiative being implemented there. Consent Collective is an “independent community activism organisation” which produces training materials for universities and other organisations required to “navigate the sexual violence terrain.” As far as I can tell from their website, if a university buys one of their packages then students can use their institutional sign in to access a number of resources. None of this seemed objectionable to me until I watched a video on their website promising to train teaching staff to “teach in a way that is trauma-informed.” Though good intentions may drive this, it would be an understatement to say that I find it objectionable. As a student, I find the idea of teaching staff tiptoeing around my ‘trauma’ (such as it is) deeply insulting. I don’t go into a lecture theatre or a seminar room wanting to learn about a sterilised, less raw, less painful version of the world. Part of what led me to academia (and particularly psychology) in the first place was a preoccupation, acquired in childhood, with what I can only describe as ‘evil’ - those things that people (often but not always men) do that cannot easily be tidied away or understood.
Greg Lukianoff and Jonathan Haidt have famously written about the expansion of the meaning of ‘safety’ on university campuses to include emotional comfort, to the detriment of both the academic environment and the students themselves. Towards the end of my own time at Cambridge, the Student Union began campaigning vociferously for the introduction of a reading week - breaking up the traditional intensity of the eight week terms in the interests of ‘student wellbeing.’ This refusal to understand that the best things in life are hard and that sometimes we have to live with the possibility that we might fail is enough to make some people question whether the emotions of their students should be a consideration for universities at all. As an older friend of mine puts it: students are legally adults, mental health services are available elsewhere, and emotional support is what friends are for.
Though this view of things can appeal in theory, it is reductive in practice. More than one of my friends (at university and elsewhere) have been raped and/or sexually assaulted during the course of my degree. Not in the sense of Person A forgetting to get verbal confirmation before touching Person B's genitals, but raped, in the legal sense of the word. Though two of them reported what happened to the police, the CPS failed to press charges in either case. I seriously doubt that what happened to any of them could have been avoided if only Cambridge had been signed up to the Consent Collective, but the reality is messy. Women are at risk of assault during university just as we are at every other stage of our lives, and we shouldn’t be left to struggle with the consequences outside of the classroom while still being expected to carry on as normal inside it. People can be hesitant to offload on to friends who are themselves busy or stressed, and mental health services on the NHS are available only after weeks or months of waiting. Why should we be expected to seek medical treatment for our normal emotional responses to horrific situations, at any rate? Particularly when those treatments for ‘anxiety’ or ‘depression’ then remain indelibly on our medical records. This holds true for issues other than sexual violence - students (male and female) are human beings who sometimes experience crises and need support.
Perhaps our society has a larger reckoning in store for how we deal with that fact (in fact, I think it does.) But in the meantime, universities are uniquely placed to support their members. When an old friend committed suicide two months before my final exams, I spent weeks feeling like I was drowning - in misery about the present, anxiety about my future, and rage about the past. I eventually cracked and sent a humiliatingly personal email to my aloof (but very kind) Director of Studies. The counselling the university then provided was free, focused on dealing with the crisis at hand, and never made me feel like anything other than a strong person dealing with a difficult situation. Most importantly, the sessions came with none of the guilt I had felt when offloading the raw ugliness of my grief on to supportive friends who were also busy preparing to take their final exams (or else trying to come to terms with the loss of our friend themselves.)
It’s natural to be repulsed by a university culture which nurtures fragility and portrays exposure to challenging ideas as cruelty. It’s tempting to argue that universities should wash their hands of ‘student wellbeing’ (which sometimes looks worryingly like a cottage industry) altogether. Yet to do so would be a failure of compassion in those cases where students do genuinely require support - and corporate “community activist organisations” like the Consent Collective will always be ready to step into the gap. The best way to ensure that our lecture theatres and seminar rooms remain ‘unsafe' (i.e., free to provoke the discomfort that is so often a part of intellectual growth) is not to abandon pastoral care. Instead we must offer it in such a way that its function is clear - and so are its limits.
Housekeeping
I'm starting an MA in Political and Legal Theory at Warwick in October, where I plan to set up a free speech society and get up to my usual feminist shenanigans. Whether you're a student or not, if you live in the area and would like to be involved with either (or just fancy a pint), then please get in touch.
Anyway - as you can see, I'm still alive! I apologise for the several months that have passed since I first resolved to take on nuanced and difficult issues and make up my own mind. Exams are finally over (I got a first which means I will never shut up about it again) and I'm crashing with family in France until my MA starts. Tentatively, I intend to write more while I'm here and actually have time - but (in the spirit of this blog, and based on your experience of me so far) it's probably best not to take my word for it.
As ever, please disagree with me in the comments or via @psycholophie on Twitter.
Congratulations Sophie! On completing your studies, for obtaining a First but also for navigating a difficult time well, I think. And thank you for sharing and informing us readers and good luck on the next leg of your education (and shenanigans!) :) cheers, elise
Congrats on your exam results, you should never shut up about it, it's a terrific achievement. Terrific article, please keep them coming!