University of Bristol Independent Student Newspaper
www.epigram.org.uk
Monday 5th October 2015
Issue
Freshers reluctant to engage News in sexual consent workshop
Chaos on the train to Tokyo World, as students escape
Sexual consent workshops, which have been introduced as part of Welcome Week,
Emily Faint Online News Editor
It has been suggested that a lack of relevance to students, and a sense that they are already informed about consent, are key contributors to the poor attendance numbers. This sentiment wildly contrasted by the fact that 1 in 7 university age women have experienced a serious physical or sexual assault during their time at university in the UK. The sexual consent workshop delivered as part of the University’s Welcome Week 2015 was developed by the Student Union in partnership with the Somerset & Avon Rape and Sexual Abuse Support (SARSAS). The scheme has received national publicity from The Times, The Guardian and major international site, Buzzfeed, for its sex-positive approach to teaching consent. continued on page 3
Page 3
Style Check out what the most stylish Bristol students wore to Welcome Fair this year Page 31
Features Kate Wyver visited Calais, and reports on the hardships of living in ‘the Jungle’ Page 8
Food Fast food gets a healthy Epigram/ Marissa Mir
Students at the ‘Reclaim the Night’ protest in November last year
makeover as Superfoods opens on Park Street Page 24
Epigram
One year after Epigram learned that Hall Wardens ‘had not complied’ with the University and Student Union’s initiatives to address the issue of sexual consent as a mandatory part of the Welcome Week programme, the response from incoming first years to these newly instated sexual consent talks has been described as ‘very poor’ by Manor Hall JCR President, Tom Phillips. He told Epigram: ‘They were all offered a sexual consent talk… but attendance was very poor.’ It was suggested that there had been some
miscommunication within the hall’s student body as to the real importance of the workshop, despite all residents receiving an email stating: ‘While attendance is not mandatory, we strongly encourage you to attend.’ An anonymous first year resident of Manor hall, who claimed to be one of only five students out of the entire hall to attend the talk on consent, said: ‘It was very informative. I really think things like that should be mandatory.’ Despite the University’s positive efforts to include an obligatory page on this topic in the online induction, any real engagement with the discussion of consent has yet to be seen. Lucy Freedman, a first year resident of Badock hall, reported that approximately 24 students from her unit attended the talk, with numbers varying wildly across other Stoke Bishop halls.
onto train tracks Michael Day
were ‘very informative’, yet attendence at non-mandatory sessions ‘very poor’
from an overcrowded train