Imperial College, rape culture and what to do about going to Picocon?

[major_clanger]

On Friday the newspaper of Imperial College Union, Felix, published a 'humour' piece. That article apparently never appeared in the online edition - which now leads with an apology for it - but you can see a picture of it here. As the Telegraph puts it,

Cook up Rohypnol to get laid, student paper jokes

I am disgusted with this, and I'm not alone, as this post and this post from my f-lists make clear. I will be writing not only to the ICU President but also to the Rector and the head of alumni relations to express my extreme displeasure and ask what measures are being taken to punish those responsible for this piece and to ensure that such material is never published in Felix again.

But I now have another problem. Next weekend is Picocon, the annual mini-convention of IC Science Fiction Society. My first Picocon was in 1987 and I was looking forward to my 25th anniversary of what was in fact my first convention and to meeting many of my friends there. But Picocon is held at Imperial College Union and the social side of it centres on the student bar at ICU.

I appreciate that ICSF, whilst part of ICU, cannot be held responsible for what Felix does. And the membership fee for Picocon will be spent in ways that benefit ICSF and its members (funding the guest, triciasullivan and buying books for the ISCF library) rather than going to ICU. But ICU will benefit from the use of the bar by attendees at Picocon. It doesn't seem right to me to take on ICU for its misconduct and then help boost its bar profits.

Looked at like that, the solution seems fairly clear. Having discussed the matter with darth_hamster, who shares my views, we will attend Picocon, albeit with rather uncomfortable feelings as to the venue. But we won't buy anything to eat or drink from ICU. We will either invite friends to join us in one of the local pubs (the Queen's Arms is a likely choice) or, if we are in the student bar at any point, we will drink only tap water.

Comments

[hawkida.livejournal.com]

Why I don't think it's a particularly funny thing to laugh and joke about, these students are far from the first people to make such jokes - here's an example of some established comedians on the BBC doing so:
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-3606432026798157466 (starts at 1 minute 15)

I somewhat doubt that the people involved were in any way serious about it actually being a look at current dating practises, and they're clearly in no doubt now that their readership, and beyond, have a big issue with it. As others have said, they are likely to have learned from this. I'm not sure that boycotting any other part of the ICU is helpful given that the perpetrators were the writer and the editor. Would you refuse have lunch with me at my work canteen because my employer commissioned this Armstrong and Miller sketch?

[redbird]

That, and that too many people don't grasp that drugging someone and then having sex with them is rape. (And some who see the problem with rohypnol will find ways not to see if it's "just" alcohol, even if the perpetrator is deliberately getting someone drunk while staying relatively sober himself.)

[ms-cataclysm.livejournal.com]

Is this because we see people 18-21 being prats all the time and know how common it is, or have we become inured to the monsters in our midst?

A bit of both, I think.

I can't imagine anything of the sort getting published in my old student newspaper though even in the unreconstructed 1980s -the Cambridge system of insisting that every student society has a faculty sponsor/adviser has a lot to recommend it .

I do think that it's progress that people are shocked and angry rather than just saying "boys will be boys".

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

This one piece is far from a full picture - it's not hard to find something rather different in the pages of Felix, and, as that article points out, LSE has had issues this year as well.

So that's two top universities ruled out. I could see you being interested in someone from UCL, but to choose someone from Wolverhampton or Portsmouth over Imperial on the basis of 5 column inches is something I'd worry about as a shareholder.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Imperial College is, I'd suggest, in an odd position; it is very male-dominated, and although this is not to the extent it was when I was an undergraduate (some 85%) most undergraduates are still male. In my time there was certainly an odd combination of academic excellence with what I can only call a 'rugger-bugger' culture. Without excusing it one iota, this may explain why there could be a mindset that not only allows this piece to be written - there are always idiots - but lets it through to be published. As you've pointed out, the apology is very half-hearted; it should, in very abject terms, be explaining how wrong the piece was, how stupid it was to allow it to be published, and above all what damage might be caused by in any way encouraging the view that this was appropriate behaviour.

Unless Imperial has changed a lot since I was there, it has a lot of rather socially-inept young men who find it difficult to even get to know a woman. I know; that was me, once. In a student body of several thousand, even if only a very small fraction of these are nudged towards thinking that just maybe getting a woman very drunk (let alone resorting to sedatives) would get them somewhere, the result could be very bad.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

I'm not sure arrogant dismissiveness is helping your case, here.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

Yes. And as this survey shows there's already enough confusion about whether alcohol- and drug-induced incapacity really "counts" among the relevant demographic as it is.


One point I've been trying to make is that there's two factors in play, here; the first is the incident in itself, which is bad enough, and the second is how it's being dealt with by the institution, which is early days but still not good - no comment from ICU in the Telegraph piece, a very poor non-apology from the Editor and so on. The brand management is dreadful so far.

[pashazade.livejournal.com]

Just to say that I've now locked the post you linked to. If anyone wants to see it whose not on my flist, they should comment on a open post and I'll add them. (Well, so long as I don't look at their profile and it's all Down With The Feminazis!)

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

Actually, the apology including the word "rape" might have helped, come to think of it.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

With respect, I don't think purplecthulhu is being either arrogant or dismissive, and I'd be concerned (given the number of friends you have in common, although I don't believe you know each other) if you fell out over this. He has been associated with IC for a large chunk of the last thirty years, and I am taking his views not as parochial defensiveness but as an insider's perspective.

If I were to attempt a partial synthesis of your respective views from various comments across this post, it might be that this behaviour is neither prevalent at IC nor confined to it, but that it is nonetheless very damaging both to women's safety at IC and to IC's reputation. Is that fair?

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

I have no intention of picking a fight, but I believe that purplecthulu's last remark about the best interests of shareholders was uncalled for.

[ex-triciasu.livejournal.com]

Good grief, this is the first I've seen of this. WTF.

Justina Robson and Adrian Czajkowski are going to be there too, btw.

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Oops - sorry to miss Justina and Adrian out! I was mindful that you were a guest because of course I've seen you posting about it...

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

Oddly, LJ hasn't been notifying of these followups, so I only spotted them once I logged back on.

I would agree with major_clanger that this is damaging to Imperial's reputation and potentially to the perceived safety of women at Imperial. I say perceived because i don't think anyone is going to do anything on the basis of this stupid piece, but I would certainly understand if people (of all sexes) felt ill at ease given what has been written.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

In the context of the issues you had raised as an employer - which I understand and respect your position on - it seemed reasonable to raise the similar hazards that would result from ruling out hirings from a top ranking institution, merely on the grounds of an article in a largely unread and often scorned section of the student newspaper.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

First, I never used the term "rule out". That is your gloss on the comments I made. What I did say, and stand by, is that given two equally well qualified candidates, relatively small differences will turn the balance one way or the other.

Secondly, I believe you are mistaken in what you consider the issue to be. It isn't the article per se which causes the most harm; it's how the institution deals with the fallout from it. As I say above, it's early days but the current response is terrible; no-one seems to have thought to make an official statement to the Telegraph, none of the emails I and others have sent have even had the most basic of acknowledgements, and the so-called apology was a mealy-mouthed affair which attempted to mislead anyone who had not read the article as to what the concerns with it were and avoided using the term "rape".

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

This is what is astonishing me. A very adverse story in one of the Big Four serious daily papers, and seemingly no response? All I've seen is the semi-apology on the Felix website and a tweet from the Student Union. Even with it being the weekend, I'd have thought that the IC communications office would have put something out, be it just a holding statement to express the Rector's concern (the Telegraph has just run a bad story about his university - of course he will be concerned) and saying that an urgent investigation is under way.

[hano.livejournal.com]

Makes me wonder how much this is registering on IC's radar atm. Or ICU's for that matter. And while it's easy to describe the brand management as 'terrible', I I think it's more that no one's be in the IC press office over the weekend to do any brand management. Also, my guess is they haven't put out a holding statement for fear of escalating the story before they've properly figured out the facts and how to deal with it.
ICU's apology was what you'd expect from amateurs, ie cack-handed and demonstrating that they're already out of their depth on this one. Best thing to do would have been wait till they could get some professional PR advice; looks like someone panicked and didn't think things through. Moral of the story is, engage brain and ring your PR experts before even thinking about opening your mouth.
Actually no, moral of the whole story is don't print vile articles that trivialise rape and degrade women but I digress.

[gaspode.livejournal.com]

Yes - Thats a much better way to say what I was trying to say :)

[ms-cataclysm.livejournal.com]

We are talking about the former employer of Professor Eric Laithwaite (sexist pig par excellence here) - they'll probably want to give the editor an award.

[surliminal.livejournal.com]

I think it's because we know in practice nowadays that there is no connection between the people franchised to run the bar and any editorial policies of any publications coming from the union. Most unis are like this nowadays. It's like boycotting the M & S cafe to complain about size zero models on Gaultier catwalks.

[teaparty.net (from livejournal.com)]

I can't follow MC in the position he's taking here, but I would be prepared - indeed, keen - to abjure the ICU bar for the whole of Picocon if it meant that you, he, and the smalls would feel able to come to Picocon.

I understand that scheduling prohibits that this year, but I encourage you to float it again in future years. I suspect you'd find a lot of old comrades who were willing to commit to an alternative watering hole for the day to enable that.

[teaparty.net (from livejournal.com)]

Leaving aside my many other concerns with this thread, I'm glad someone's made that point. It's true that Felix is a suborganisation within ICU. But ICU is part of IC, which is part of the British University System, a subsidiary of HMG, which in turn is a member of the Council of Europe, and so on. Will you boycott ECHR decisions coming down from the Council's court to avoid looking like a hypocrite with respect to this article?

Membership doesn't signify; control does. You will certainly remember how fiercely editorially-independent Felix was when we were there, and because memes propagate I expect that to have continued as much as the rugger-bugger mentality clearly has. The buck stops at the editor; (s)he will have to make a decision about how far up the flagpole to run the author of this piece, and will in all likelihood have to defend that decision publicly. If his or her judgement is generally felt to be wrong, (s)he will probably have to step down as editor of Felix. This is right and proper, and in my view, proportionate.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

Some of us who have written to the Felix editor have received replies this morning (mailed around midnight last night). They're better replies, but are the kind of thing that should be said publicly. I've suggested this to the editor.

We'll see how things progress...

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Prof Laithwaite had retired by the time I arrived at Imperial's Electrical Engineering department; are you referring to conduct of his within Imperial or outside?

My only experience of the man was a talk he gave to the physics society as a visiting lecturer. He caused a degree of outraged astonishment, but that was by explaining that the vector cross product was wrong and his version was better.