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

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

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.

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'suggesting that we look askance at any applications from current Imperial College students to the vacation student placement scheme.'

You may wish to bring that to the attention of someone at Imperial so that they pay attention. I would suggest the Felix editor, Union president, Rector and maybe the Dean of the appropriate faculty (I don't know your field so I don't know which would be appropriate). Their email addresses are available online.

I've already written to the Union President and the Rector to that effect.

I consider the Felix editor a lost cause.

Fair enough - but I think the editor still needs to learn - indeed has *a lot* to learn.

Of course one of the consequences of bringing this up at College level could be for them to lose all editorial independence, which would prevent them from holding college or the union to account about their mistakes. This would be a bad outcome for everyone (except College).

What is probably needed is clarification as to what are matters where there must be editorial independence (criticism of College or Union behaviour) and matters where common standards of behaviour apply (i.e. not acting unlawfully or so as to bring the college into disrepute.)

College's interpretation of bring the College into disrepute can be rather different from a newspaper's. In this case there are clearly no redeeming features, but making public, say, financial malpractice that college would want to settle quietly*, could be seen differently.

*And before anybody puts two and two together, this has not to my knowledge ever happened.

And I should care about this why, precisely?

Look at it from my perspective. I'm a partner - that is, co-owner - of a business which is a substantial graduate employer. I'm also in a sector which has had a long history of sexual harassment which I have personal experience of both as a sufferer and in trying to manage the fallout. Sexual harassment (which, for the avoidance of doubt and out of the examples I've personal experience of, includes sexual assault) not only can cost individual businesses enormous sums in law suits (including all the management time and reputational harm done as a result) as well as in lost productivity, losing good people with all the investment that's been put into them, stress, illness and general messiness but has long been a running canker which people are only now, tentatively, coming round to tackling.

It's of no interest to me whether Imperial has a newspaper or how that newspaper is run. It is of vital interest to me as an employer not to make the expensive mistake of employing a sexual harasser. Given that an editor holding a sabbatical position and having, I understand, obtained that position as a result of a student election has decided to run a piece which suggests that rape using (counterfeit) Rohyphol is "a foolproof way of avoiding being blue-balled this Valentine's" and then, in the apology for having run it, describes the acts in question as "the dating practices of Imperial students" presents me, as a graduate employer, with a serious risk management problem when considering whether to employ people from an institution which clearly considers that culturally acceptable.

My comments are, of course, not just directed at you. I don't know anything about you, so cannot speculate why you might or might not care. I do know rather more about our host, and suspect that he might care - hence my comment.

As a graduate employer I'm sure you do due diligence and will, in the course of this, find that the article is in a section of Felix of minority interest attempting to be satirical, rather than presenting a documentary analysis of "the dating practices of Imperial students" and furthermore it describes anybody who attempts this as a 'waste of oxygen' and a 'fucking moron'. No - I'm not trying to defend the piece, but I am showing that selective quoting can change how it appears in both directions. (You missed the words 'satirical look at' from your quote about 'dating practices' for example.)

I'm also sure that due diligence will lead you to conclude that an institution of 20000 is not accurately represented by the contents of 5 column inches written by one idiot in one output of the student media, and that institution-wide measures, like the fact that Imperial is one of only four top rated universities in Stonewall's gay guide to universities might be a better indicator.

I've read the article in full. Obviously.

"A satirical look at dating practices" implies, to me, that the dating practices exist and the approach taken to them in the article is one of satire. I don't suppose that the problem of drug-assisted date rape is any worse at Imperial than it is at other UK educational establishments of similar size, but it's not encouraging that the approach the student newspaper chooses to take to a (known) problem is to find it funny.

I don't see why it seems to be so difficult for people to accept that in an era when employers are having to make heart-breaking decisions on the narrowest of margins when ten or twenty or forty or a hundred highly qualified applicants are showing up for each vacancy that 5 column inches written by one idiot in one output of the student media are likely to have an inordinate effect on the employability of Imperial College students and actively work against the positive things the institution is doing. There are four top-rated universities in the Stonewall gay guide to universities - and in relation the the other three there isn't the "date rapist apologist" downside.

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.

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

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?

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.

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.

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".

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.

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.

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...

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.

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.

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.

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.

Edited 2012-02-14 12:15 (UTC)

(no subject)

purplecthulhu.livejournal.com - 2012-02-14 12:11 (UTC) - Expand

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.

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.

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.

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

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