CW: Rape, sexual violence, sexual harassment.
With each headline, the world becomes increasingly desensitised to sexual violence. 62 million men go unnoticed, swept up by the information overload of the online sphere; the reality becomes ineffable, obfuscated by over-saturation. Memes about Epstein, jokes about Clavicular, and discourse on the manosphere have seeped into our digital vernacular, such as to become ubiquitous, and, consequently, normalised. Nor, in the University of Oxford, is abuse of power, on the level of both students and staff, an alien concept. The result of this over-abundance is not to destigmatise a sensitive topic, but to train us out of outrage and into critical stultification. For the co-presidents of It Happens Here, Aparna Shankar and Maddie Gillett, and the two policy officers, Isobel Cammish and Abby Smith, literacy about consent and sexual violence is needed now more than ever.
It Happens Here, established in 2013, is an anti-sexual violence campaign led by Oxford students, which advocates for policy change at the University, as well as running events and offering support services for students. They were instrumental in the 2021 launch of the Safe Lodge Scheme, providing a point of refuge for students in distress. Likewise, their campaigning played a major role in effecting the University’s ban on intimate relationships between academics and their students in 2023.
The very structure of the campaign’s team – including a BAME rep, a Class rep, a Disability rep, and an LGBTQ+ rep – is shaped by their recognition that an individual’s experience of sexual violence is influenced by the confluence of all aspects of their identity; reprising an ossified approach in each unique case risks forfeiting nuance and sensitivity. By embedding their values into their team’s set-up, the society has committed itself to an intersectional approach.
Aparna, who began working on It Happens Here as BAME rep, is keen to emphasise that “people of colour face intersectional barriers when it comes to reporting sexual violence”. Not only do people, and particularly women, of colour experience higher levels of sexual violence, but, furthermore, issues of self-blame “can be compounded by racial differences”.
Nor is race the only factor which can aggravate such cases. For Maddie, who started out as LGBTQ+ rep, the work of It Happens Here would be incomplete without nuanced consideration of how queerness can influence how a person experiences sexual violence. “You can’t talk about sexual violence without talking about the practice of safe sex”, she notes. This becomes a problem when, as is all too often the case, “safe sex is taught from a very heterosexual lens”, generating additional hurdles in the process of coming to terms with, or even recognising, instances of sexual violation.
It Happens Here, along with numerous other student societies, including Class Act and OULGBTQ+ society, was disaffiliated from the SU a few years ago, as part of a broader transformation of SU structure. The change had profound ramifications for the campaign: having lost their funding, “for a while we just weren’t really up and running”. Without this stable source of income, Aparna explains, “we rely a lot on college JCRs which can be unreliable. And so when we’re putting on events, it’s a bit more difficult.
“We are managing it, and that’s why it helps to have such a large network, because it’s not just committee members who can apply, anyone could apply to help us get funding from their college.”
The challenges induced by the dearth of funding as a fallout from the SU disaffiliation are only compounded by concomitant struggles to ensure engagement. It Happens Here is, Maddie admits, “not a very well-known society”, and losing the network that came with the support of a centralised administrative body meant that “we went a bit underground, because it’s a big structural change to navigate.”
Yet the problem has its roots in something beyond the practical. It is, perhaps, an inevitable corollary of the nature of the campaign itself. Sexual violence is necessarily an uncomfortable topic, but just as commonly a misunderstood one as well. The new presidents are intent on addressing “the many intricate and complex ways that sexual violence goes unreported and not talked about in society”
As a result of the myriad misconceptions that surround the issue, the campaign suffers from a lack of consistent engagement. “I’ve had a lot of people come up to me and go, oh, I haven’t, you know, I haven’t been a victim of sexual violence, so can I still come to the events? And absolutely you can.” Aparna explains. “It’s a collective effort. So, I want people to feel comfortable coming to our events, even if they’re not a survivor of sexual violence.”
Yet the problem with engagement is not limited to those who have no experience with sexual harassment. Even survivors often face difficulties, whether external or internal, when seeking help from the community. “There’s another barrier to sexual violence. It’s not an obvious thing that happens to people, as in sometimes it takes people a long time to realise if they have been sexually assaulted or raped, or if they’ve survived some sort of sexual violence.”
It’s difficult to keep the thread of the narrative taut within the chaos of university life, of events large and small, of conflicting emotions. After all, everything blurs when held too near. The realisation can take months for some – for others, it takes even longer.
“I always think of it as, you know, if someone walks past you on the street and just slaps you in the face, you know, you’ve been slapped in the face, you know?” Yet sexual violence is rarely so clear-cut, particularly since, as Aparna notes, “you’re made to feel like what happened to you doesn’t matter.” The tendency to complicate the issue with introspection is dangerously prevalent, in large part attributable to “that inherent self-blame reaction towards it”, and the “challenges of invalidating yourself”.
Often, this is exacerbated by semantic difficulties, as Aparna explains: “I think that even the term sexual violence can be unhelpful sometimes, because people tend to have an idea of what they think sexual violence looks like, I don’t know, a stranger in an alley who uses a weapon, for example.” The harsh picture that the term conjures up belies the reality. It is an inherently violent experience to have one’s boundaries crossed, regardless of whether there was physical injury involved, regardless of who the perpetrator might have been. A hazy conception of what falls within a certain definition “can stop people from accessing these forms of support. They might see something like the Sexual Harassment and Violence Support Service and think, oh, that’s not for me, because my experience wasn’t inherently violent, there’s probably someone else who might need it more than me.”
Reporting sexual violence is inevitably a harrowing process. Pain requires proof, consent becomes a negotiation, and the burden falls on the survivor to explain a story they never asked to tell. Yet for every psychological barrier to seeking help overcome, an institutional complication arises. Safeguarding provision at the University, as well as the process of dealing with a case of sexual violence, all too often becomes mired in bureaucratic reticulation, an oppressive complexity that is, on the whole, exacerbated by Oxford’s collegiate system. When responsibility for student welfare is divided between individual colleges and the central University, a transparent procedure to follow when seeking help is elusive.
“The college system means there’s a lot of inconsistency in policy,” Maddie points out. “Whereas in some universities there’s a centralised policy on spiking, for example, each college is different here.”
When students are immersed in the microcosm of a particular college, they are less likely to be familiar with wider university resources. “I don’t think many people know about the Sexual Harassment and Violence Support Service. I don’t think people know about centralised welfare, things other than uni counselling.”
The tendency towards insularity inherent within the collegiate system, as Isobel notes, carries the potential to help or harm: a close-knit community can provide a crucial support network in a time of crisis, or, conversely, entrap a survivor in oppressive proximity to the circumstances, or even to the perpetrator, of what they’ve experienced. Oxford’s landscape narrows with the ever-hovering possibility of confrontation, or familiar places become corroded by association.
Yet this is only part of the picture. For Oxford’s postgraduates, who make up just over 50% of the student body, the structure of the University generates additional problems. “At least in my experience, postgrad students feel really disconnected from central university bodies,” Abby explains. In her fresher’s week, the topic of sexual violence “wasn’t even covered.”
“There’s an assumption that because we’re all older, there are just things that you don’t have to lecture people about and you just assume that they know, which I think can be really harmful… everyone’s coming from a different background, a different system, a different structure, you can’t assume that we are all on the same understanding.”
Beyond the college system, antiquarianism, inevitably, characterises much of the University’s make-up. Apart from inculcating an intimidating atmosphere of grandiose severity, which, rooted as it is in patriarchal tradition, can act as a deterrent in reporting cases of sexual violence, Oxford’s long-standing prestige and distinctive practices give rise to additional problems.
“Oxford’s structure is more likely to allow members of staff to keep their positions, like we’ve heard a lot about this in the news,” Maddie points out. “And it’s very hard to get fired as a fellow. And you’re someone who’s interacting often one-on-one with your students, whereas you wouldn’t be at another uni. So I think the employment structure of Oxford is something that is problematic.” The status of Oxford’s colleges as individual legal entities often works to fragment accountability. Many academics have employment contracts with both their college and their faculty, adding a further layer of complication to the handling of allegations.
Isobel notes the atypical dynamics engendered by the relationships between students and tutors at Oxford: “You have drinks with your tutors, your tutors will buy you alcohol, you’ll have dinner with them, you’ll maybe be in these like one-on-one situations with them a lot more, which is a bit weird.”
A spokesperson for the University told Cherwell: “Sexual misconduct, violence and harassment have no place at Oxford. We strive to ensure that Oxford is always a safe space for all students and staff and take concerns seriously, applying clear, robust procedures. Support for those affected is a priority, and we take precautionary and/or disciplinary action where justified.”
A survey published in 2023 by the ongoing project OUR SPACE found that half of Oxford students report having experienced sexual harassment. Within the University support system, the 2024-25 academic year saw an increase in student referrals to the Sexual Harassment and Violence Support Service. It is easy to resort to despondency in the face of such a seemingly unassailable challenge. When the personal is reduced to the numerical, tangible impact becomes difficult to discern. But Aparna notes that the metric of their success has different aspects: “I think a lot of it can be quite individual sometimes, in terms of individual people reaching out to kind of tell you, hey, this, this helped, you know?
“It’s hard to see the long-term impact of what you’re doing when you’re doing it. But it’s reminders like these of people, because if there are a few people who are being vocal about it, chances are the vast majority of the rest of them think it, but don’t say it.” To live as a survivor of sexual violence, especially when faced with an impression of institutional inaction, is “an isolating thing, but to have a campaign in Oxford and people that care about this very deeply, so that they give up their own time. It’s a validating connection.”
As the presidents begin the new term, they are not overwhelmed into inaction, but focused on the tangible next steps they can take. “Right now, we want to get our name out. We want people to know that we exist. If you’re a survivor of sexual violence, it’s an isolating feeling, because you don’t feel like the world is on your side. It feels like you’re the only person that’s going through this. So to have a network available to you, to have other people that are willing to go to events and make time to support you – it’s a feeling that’s unmatched for a survivor.”
“A lot of it’s so slow going in policy work, and we’d rather have a campaign that is very useful and well thought-out,” Isobel adds, “but I do really love the idea that it’ll be having an impact on each generation of students. It’s a slow-moving process, and we’d rather do it right.”
Protecting students against all forms of sexual violence, and providing support for those who have survived it, is a duty that falls not only on the University as an institution, but on the individuals who make up its body, both staff and students. “This is an ongoing issue that requires everyone to pitch in”, Aparna emphasises. “It’s everyone’s problem. It affects everyone in your life.”
“I always like the phrase, it happens here, and it’s our responsibility to stop it. Because it is the responsibility of each and every one of us.”
It Happens Here: https://www.ithappenshere.co.uk
It Happens Here is not a support service, but a student-led campaign.
University Sexual Harassment and Violence Support Service (SHVSS): https://www.ox.ac.uk/students/welfare/supportservice
University Independent Sexual Violence Advisor (ISVA): https://www.ox.ac.uk/students/welfare/supportservice/university-independent-sexual-violence-advisor-isva
Harassment Advisor Network: https://edu.admin.ox.ac.uk/harassment-advisor-network-0
