News
15 MARCH 2021
SOAS makes a start on SGBV, but there’s more work to be done Louisa Johnson, MA Global Creative and Cultural Industries
Content warning: sexual and gender-based violence In November 2020, SOAS released a new ‘Sexual and Gender-Based Violence’ (SGBV) policy, accompanied by two staff and survivor handbooks. This policy works alongside the ‘Preventing and Responding to SGBV’ guidance and other pre-existing institutional policies. Dr. Monika Nangia wrote the policy with guidance from Empowered Campus — an external organisation which advises universities on sexual violence. Dr Nangia had just begun her role as Director of Student and Academic Services in 2018 when she heard about the petition by the student-led campaign, Account For This, regarding SOAS’ insufficient SGBV policy. Because of the restructuring, there was no specific department designated to this issue. As a result, Dr Nangia and Professor Andrea Cornwall decided to spearhead this mission. In December 2019, Dr Nangia convened a meeting with members from the institution, Account For This and the Students’ Union to discuss SGBV with Empowered Campus. Rachel Vogler, a Gender Studies MA student working for Account For This, is cautious of Empowered Campus’ involvement and would prefer universities to commission local rape crisis centres to avoid creating ‘further distance between the student body and the faculty.’ Corinna Del Debbio, a Politics and International Relations student, was previously interviewed by the Spirit regarding her open letter calling for an improved SGBV policy. Del Debbio praises the new policy’s focus on ‘impact over intent’ which helps counter the ‘innocent until proven guilty’ narrative protecting perpetrators. However, she also says the
policy’s ‘survivor-centred’ and ‘trauma-informed’ values are not consistently upheld. She highlights Section 6 of the 'Staff Handbook’ which states that ‘the emotional wellbeing of the complainant/survivor’ is one of the ‘key considerations for what constitutes a serious case.’ As Vogler elaborates: ‘Measuring how much distress the victim is in plays into the myth of the perfect survivor, and this myth detracts our attention from perpetrators and holistic institutional accountability.’ Del Debbio and Vogler request more transparency in the reporting process. This includes addressing the exact timeline, the evidence required, meeting attendees, the names of the staff members facilitating this process at every level and their relevant training. For Vogler, this is the issue with using the university’s general complaints procedure to investigate SGBV cases: ‘SGBV needs to be given the respect and room for nuance that it deserves.’ To help with this, Dr Nangia launched ‘Report and Support’ in 2019. This service accepts anonymous reports and links all relevant policies and support systems. Her team is currently working on updating the portal to include named reports so more action can be taken on SGBV cases. The policies also reference the peer-led, consent education campaign, Enough is Enough. According to Charli Keely, Enough is Enough Administrator and Social Anthropology student, campaign funding has come to an end, with no official confirmation yet on its renewal. Keely describes other setbacks: the Students’ Union launched a campaign Moodle page without consulting members; there was a delay hiring this year’s cohort; and the university’s administrative system was inadequate for workshop bookings. They state that many facilitators suffer ‘burnout’ due to the workload and ‘emotional labour’. Enough is Enough is currently putting
through a UGM motion on how the campaign should run going forward. Del Debbio, who has facilitated Enough is Enough workshops, says the policy’s reliance on the legal differentiation between ‘rape’ and ‘assault by penetration’ opposes the teachings of the campaign, which instead scrutinises hierarchal, gendered definitions. Del Debbio wishes more workshop content was reflected in the policy, given that its importance is emphasised throughout. Dr Nangia says she is very receptive to feedback: ‘I expect more [critique] going forward, which is why I built into the policy an annual review. The Equality and Diversity Committee must regularly receive those updates and keep it fresh.’ Already Dr Nangia is working on releasing an amended version of the policy which is not solely focused on women, and more accurately reflects SOAS’ diverse community. The Students’ Union issued this statement: ‘Enough is Enough is a valued campaign which the SU has supported and worked on for the past 5 years, and will continue to support into the future. Through the work of the SU, the campaigning of Enough is Enough and Account for This, SOAS now has in place an SGBV Policy and has undertaken an SGBV review, identifying and putting in place interventions across the School such as Report & Support, and continually recognising the essential nature of peer-led consent training. There have been significant challenges caused by Covid resulting in the SU as an organisation being severely overstretched in all areas, and we’re sad that this led to delays and challenges for delivering the Enough is Enough programme. Despite this, a lot of progress has been made and we were excited to see how well consent workshops adapted to being online, and remain determined to secure funding for this programme to continue.’
Enough is Enough Returns But Not Without Difficulty Corinna Del Debbio, BA Politics and International Relations
Content warning: sexual and gender-based violence Enough is Enough successfully ran 78 workshops again this year, with the vast majority of SOAS freshers participating. The aim of the campaign is to tackle the vast disparities in how sexual education is taught, both globally and within the UK, in order to ensure there is a commonality of knowledge amongst the SOAS community at the offset of everyone’s time here. Enough is Enough has been an important part of SOAS’ efforts to produce a consent culture in campus for 5 years now. Every year, the campaign runs workshops - which became mandatory in 2017 - for the freshers which cover various topics surrounding consent. The workshops have usually run in person during the first week of Freshers, in September. However, due to Covid-19 the campaign had to adapt to a digital format. From the offset, there were clashes between the campaign and the Students’ Union (SU) as to what format the workshops should take this year, and how to best adapt to online learning. The SU had pushed to develop a Moodle page on the topics covered by the consent workshops, with a tick-box test at the end for everyone to fill out. After pressure from previous facilitators mounted, the SU hired
a coordinator in December. Previously, this post has usually been advertised in May/June of the previous academic year, and assigned during the Summer. The SU’s approach sparked outrage from previous members of the campaign, many of whom had volunteered to help organise how to run the workshops this year in spite of Covid-19. The campaign strongly believes that the interactive element of the workshops is pivotal to their functioning. Students involved in the campaign believe that, as consent is already a topic too often left undiscussed, back-benching the workshops to an online Moodle page would harm the creation of a consent culture at SOAS. Ultimately, the campaign managed to secure the running of workshops online, over Zoom, in the first half of the second term. There were still complications with the SU, primarily due to the budget granted from the School not being enough to ensure a successful facilitation of all of the workshops, the facilitator pay, and the necessary training days involved. The campaign ran with only 16 facilitators this year, which is about half of what previous years have seen. The SU advertised the coordinator posts for the campaign as 8 hours a week, which is about half of the time the campaign coordinators truly needed to ensure a smooth running of the campaign. This resulted in the two coordinators for this year racking up 100 hours each of unpaid labour. One of the SU suggestions to work around the tight budget was paying the facilitators the outdated London Living
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Wage, rather than the current one of £10.85 an hour. Primarily, the campaign received encouraging and constructive feedback on the workshops, despite their running online. There were however a few comments, mostly on SOASkmeout, which called out the campaign for the compulsory nature of their workshops, pointing out the potential irony in rendering a workshop about consent mandatory for people to partake. The campaign took this feedback on board, acknowledging that there should be a better ‘opt-out’ system in place for those who do not feel comfortable attending, especially as this is an important element in ensuring the campaign is truly survivor-centred. The workshops have now come to an end for this academic year, and the campaign is now focusing its efforts on ensuring that its funding can be renewed by the School for another 5 years. Enough is Enough has been included in all of the school’s updated SGBV policy work, and remains a large marketing point for the school, however despite all this the renewed funding has not yet been guaranteed. Currently, Enough is Enough is looking for people to get involved in lobbying the School to ensure that the consent workshops - and the campaign at large - remain in existence. The SOAS Spirit reached out to the SU who provided the following statement: ‘The SU have supported and worked with Enough is Enough for the 5 years of
the project, and will continue to do so as we work to extend the project funding and expand what we can do with the project. At all stages we've been working to do as much as we can, and find ways to adapt to our current situation. ‘Sadly, as with all organisations right now, we've been hit hard by the pandemic having to adjust everything we do on limited funding, reduced staffing and increased student needs. It's been great working with the campaign to find creative ways around the problems, and we want to be clear about how much we value this, and do not view this as a 'clash'. We're at the centre of the fight for additional resources to do more to support survivors of SGBV and create a consent culture at SOAS, both our officers and staff are involved in a number of projects, working groups and committees across SOAS to help achieve this. ‘SOAS SU is a committed London Living Wage employer and have a policy on this, at no point would we employ anyone below this level. We have contracts of employment setting out expectations and responsibilities, and have always encouraged all employees to raise concerns about working conditions with managers and via our procedures. This has been no different for this campaign. We're in full agreement that the funding we have for this project is restrictive which is why we've been working hard to secure additional funding that will enable the SU and campaign to grow.’
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