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

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

Taking your points rather in reverse, one of my immediate concerns was that the Felix editor did not seem to have taken on board the seriousness of what happened, as indicated by the rather weak apology that seemed more focussed on apologising for any offence caused than for the poor editorial decision to run the piece in the first place. Nor was there much sign from Imperial College Union of concern about this (I saw a solitary tweet about it). That makes me wonder what the general mindset across ICU is; pointing the finger just at the Felix Editor doesn't tackle the wider question of whether there is a problem with the culture within ICU.

(purplecthulhu has noted that there are no longer Union General Meetings as we knew them and that ICU is now governed solely by a student council. If the ICU mindset is that of a group of inward-looking hacks, I can see how such a situation may arise.)

As for where the buck stops, I see your legalistic point :-) and raise you my own: the concept of remoteness. For the reasons I've tried to outline above, I consider that this goes beyond just Felix. But I don't see it as as issue that went beyond IC, mainly because once we go outside College we are just too remote from anyone who made any questionable decisions.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

C.P.Snow's first rule of politics: "Be There." The "it's the weekend" excuse is simply pathetic. The Telegraph ran the story on Friday - it's hardly rocket science for someone to have worked out that having someone around over the weekend to handle fallout might be a cunning plan.

My betting is that they're hoping the story will die quietly and, if necessary, they can play the "humourless feminists over-reacting" card.

[biascut.livejournal.com]

I just want to link the SCUM manifesto all over the place and see whether they think that's "banter".

[biascut.livejournal.com]

This is not the Sun, it's a bunch of students. Being students means learning things. With luck, they've learned something.

That's horribly dismissive. It's effectively sacrificing female students' right to comfortable and safe environment on the grounds that their male colleagues are in the process of "learning" that it's not OK to make jokes about raping them.

Besides which, you don't learn anything if no bad things happen as a consequence of the things you do wrong.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

D & I have received identical letters from the Felix Editor, sent by email c. midnight last night. I expect this email was sent as a standard reply to anyone who had emailed the Felix Editor about this issue. It may soon be in the public domain.

[teaparty.net (from livejournal.com)]

Taking your points in order, I agree with your first; the editor is the person whose job it is to contain this fire, and (s)he doesn't seem to have done a great job, at least at first. I don't agree that it's ICU's job to fix this, and if they were to quote "editorial independence" at a complaint I'd see that as a proper defence, not a wimp-out. I do agree that any organisation run by a bunch of hacks - up to and including Parliament - can seem rather out of touch when it comes to self-governance.

I don't find the buck-stopping discussion to be legalistic, but purely pragmatic. There's no point in leaning on person or organisation A to change the behaviour of person or organisation B, if A doesn't control B. I'm a member of the Motorcycle Action Group - the only thing I'm a life member of besides ICU - but good luck in controlling my riding behaviour by lobbying MAG. Moreover, the enormity of the issue doesn't somehow rewrite the chain of control; even if my riding was execrable, and I posed a danger to life and limb of other road users all around the M25, lobbying MAG to change my behaviour would still be a waste of time. You may be right that this issue has blown up too big to be "just Felix" any more, but that doesn't (to me) suddenly invalidate editorial independence; it only increases the risk that the current editor's head will roll.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

I think most people don't think of the normal business of a university as politics and so don't have people around to handle things at weekends. That said, I have yet to see anything from the College level today or further public emissions from ICU or Felix - so a poor showing there so far.

There has, however, been an improved apology emailed from the Felix editor to those who contacted him. I have asked his permission to post this but have yet to have a response.

[brixtonbrood.livejournal.com]

Aw thanks. We haven't been able to make Picocon for ages - there always seem to be random scheduling things that weekend for some reason (it's normally half term, which doesn't help) and we have longstanding family commitments at Easter which always rules out Eastercon, but I have high hopes for London Worldcon: only two and a half years to go.

[hano.livejournal.com]

Then there's this: http://felixonline.co.uk/comment/2167/sexism-at-imperial-college/ - an article by a male student decrying the misogyny and sexism rampant at IC printed in the same issue as the Hangman piece. The comments are... enlightening. Yes really.

Comments

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

I think my brain broke at this one:

My point is, not all misogyny is malicious, and some forms have to be tolerated to allow for an equal society.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

Would it have been along these lines ( From a post on tumblr from someone who appears to be a student at another college of the University of London ):

Dear [me],

First of all, thank you for taking the time to email about this.

I would like to take this opportunity to personally apologise to you for the offence caused by the article in question.

Having reviewed a lot of the comments that have been made directly to me and that have been appearing in online spaces such as Twitter, a lot of readers felt that the article incited sexual violence, trivialised rape and generally contributed to the idea of a rape culture. I would like to assure you that this was in no way our intention, and we all agree that a piece of content which does this is wholly unacceptable.

This incident has highlighted several major flaws in our quality control process, for which I take full responsibility. I have personally been working with our editors and contributors all weekend to put in place a new system that will ensure more stringent content guidelines are followed and that the consequences of every article we publish are considered fully. I am also ensuring that our writing team is fully educated on and sensitive to such topics.

I deeply regret my own personal failure in not having taken action to prevent this happening in the first place, and I hope you will take it as a given that after this incident the content that goes into the section will be radically rethought.

Yours sincerely,

[Felix editor]

I mean, I agree it's better, but it's still pretty weaselly: "A lot of readers felt" and "a piece of content which does this" - is he accepting that this is such a piece of content, or isn't he?

In other news, I'm still awaiting any form of response to my own complaints.

[penguineggs.livejournal.com]

I linked a public domain apology from the editor below - recognise it?

[major-clanger.livejournal.com]

I have just received a differently-worded reply from Scott Heath, ICU President. I've asked him for permission to quote it - ah, he's just come back to me to say I can. As it's a letter to me, I'll put it in an f-locked post.

EDIT See my post here.

[purplecthulhu.livejournal.com]

Yes - that looks familiar, and I agree with you about the weasellyness. A number of us have taken this up with him in response to that email - no replies yet that I'm aware of.

At the very least he should change the webpage apology to something closer to this email. I suspect there is a lot of panic in Felix and ICU about this now and that they may be adopting the ostrich position. I've also not seen anything from College yet (though I'm now a long way away so might easily have missed something).

Friday's issue of Felix will be interesting, but I won't be back in the UK in time to pick it up.

[purpletigron.livejournal.com]

Yes - that is what I received. Thanks!