CW: Sexual assault; mention of suicide.
When you walk into college on the first day, you experience community, a sense of stepping into belonging. Consent talks are delivered between icebreakers; there’s a seemingly endless cycle of club nights and coffee trips for people to get to know each other. Everyone is a fresh-faced student still caught up in the thrill of introductions and discovering the people who will shape the next years of their lives.
Fast-forward to Week Three: a Saturday night where I had my consent treated as a non-factor and I came frighteningly close to taking my own life. In the days and weeks afterwards, the world of Oxford seemed to warp. Sleep when it came brought nightmares. Waking up felt like being thrown back into a body that I no longer trusted, a body with new scars, both mental and physical, that no longer felt like mine. The harm was not isolated to one night. It seeps into every day after, into the silences, into the laughs, growing into a cacophony of unbearable levels. In Oxford, where history is preserved in stone, my own life felt shattered beyond repair.
I don’t know how many times I said the word “no” that night. All I know is that two is too many, and the 40 repetitions recorded in my diary entry are a testament to the desperate rhythm of a voice that was never heard.The power, or impotence, of words was laid bare for me that night. I managed to text the three letters of SOS to one of my best friends, in the drunken, misguided hope that she could come in guns blazing and save the day. Someone I had previously called a friend characterised my response as regret. That word stuck with me. I did not regret saying no, I regretted the world that allowed my “no” to be ignored, the system that treated my voice and consent as negotiable. To refer to this as regret is to twist the story, denying reality, agency, and accountability.
I remember the realisation: someone is having sex with me. Yes, I was there, but I felt detached, like a bystander to something awful. I thought about running, but I was confused – how could someone I trusted, someone I called a friend, be doing this? Surely if I just played along, everything would be okay? I blamed myself, and whether right or wrong, part of me always will. Should I have said no differently? Should I have stopped them with force? These are questions that will always haunt me.
With me, as with many people, alcohol was never the villain; to blame actions on it is to deny agency and responsibility. With words as simple as no, and with an issue as fundamental as consent, intoxication cannot be used as an excuse. Drinking culture does not make consent harder to navigate, only easier to ignore. In the Oxford bubble, alcohol is a strong character, flowing through every social, every formal, every predrinks. It fuels many connections, friendships, and memories. But it also allows people to hide behind it. To shrug off what they have done. To pretend that crossing a line was out of their hands. For me alcohol was in the room but was not the reason. The reason was someone that chose not to listen. That’s not intoxication, it’s indifference to humanity.
The next morning brought yet more confusion. I had been sworn to secrecy the night before, yet rumours soon spread amongst our friends. Something as fundamental as the negation of my consent cannot be treated as a casual story to fill the gaps in conversation. So, I did the only thing I could: I stood there, silent, shaking. Even now, I sometimes get a question, a message, a half-knowing look. And still, I cannot answer. So here, in this article, lies my answer, the one that words over a pint could never express. Sex without consent is never acceptable, and the knowledge that some can see it otherwise, even within the same four walls as me, repulses me.
I’ve heard the experience compared to being locked in a cage with a wild animal. Even if you know you are likely safe, once someone has shown they are capable of such harm, life in college becomes precarious. You know they are not hunting you. But they have proven they can damage you. Every day becomes a highly emotive game of unintentional cat and mouse, in which every corner you walk around, however beautiful and however much you are enjoying the moment, turns into an alien land, associated with violence, not positivity. Every familiar face blurs into association: those who know and those who don’t. I understand now, as I understood then, that opening up to others, even if it breaks me to speak, is at the same time one of the hardest and most important things I will ever do.
The most important part of this article, however, is not about me. It is about all the Oxford students who have experienced sexual harassment, as many as half according to a 2023 survey. Living life as a statistic is strange, but each of those people are far more than that. A large proportion of our university population lives under the inescapable hold of fear and unease, knowing that safety here is conditional, fragile, and often dismissed. We are told this place is built on tradition and excellence. But behind the gowns and Latin phrases lies a reality far less romantic. When so many students know what it is to have their boundaries ignored, it is not an isolated issue, a single story, but a culture, a rot we cannot ignore.
If the University insists on taking pride in its historic facades and dreaming spires, it must also face the nightmares endured in their long shadow. Here I want an Oxford that I am proud of, and that I can love. But that cannot happen until it is an Oxford that can feel safe again for me, and most importantly be safe for everyone.
I must end with a very simple message. That help is there if you seek it out. The first step is always the hardest, but please take it. Have the conversation. Send the message. Life does get better, and however long it takes there is a way through. Please, if you are on the fence, grasp the hands reaching out to you – there are good people around that will help. I wouldn’t be here today without the support of incredible friends and professionals, and I never want anyone to reach the point where they feel that they will never be safe again.
