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]

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.

[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.

[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...

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.

[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.