A survey commissioned by YUSU has revealed that 72 per cent of York students that responded had experienced sexual harassment whilst at University. Vision can exclusively reveal that of these incidents, a shocking 97.5 per cent went unreported.
The ‘Zero Tolerance’ survey was carried out by YUSU Welfare in conjunction with the YUSU Women’s Officers to explore student awareness of sexual harassment. It was completed by over 200 students.
The survey revealed that women at York were more likely to be a victim of sexual harassment, with 75 per cent of female students reporting experiencing one or more types of harassment.
Surprisingly, 65 per cent of male students also reported being sexually harassed.
Certain types of harassment were disproportionately experienced by women, for instance few men had experienced wolf-whistling or catcalling compared to over half of female respondents.
LGBTQ students were also 12 per cent more likely to have experienced sexual harassment, encountering inappropriate questions about their sexuality and sex life far more often than non-LGBTQ respondents. One student, who wished to remain anonymous, told Vision, “It happens to me a lot. I think because I’m bisexual people see me as an easy target, particularly when they’re drunk.”
58 per cent of respondents who had experienced harassment didn’t know the perpetrator. Unknown offenders were split roughly equally between being unknown students and locals. Harassers were most often male (80 per cent) though women were the perpetrators in 15 per cent of cases.
When asked why they hadn’t reported the incidents, the majority of victims said that they didn’t know how to report or didn’t trust the process and that they didn’t feel that there would be any point. Students who knew the perpetrators feared they wouldn’t be believed or that it would happen again.
Women’s Officer Millie Perkins told Vision that the results were upsetting, but not surprising. She was startled that so many students did not report their ordeal.
“This report shows we have a lot of work to do in educating students on what constitutes sexual harassment. The reporting process needs to be made easier and more accessible in order to increase the reporting rate which would allow the issue to be targeted more effectively. We will be planning campaigns throughout the term in order to address this problem and raise the profile of the zero tolerance policy.”
The largest part of the survey was dedicated to uncovering the views of students on what constituted sexual harassment.
Respondents were presented with several different scenarios and asked to interpret whether sexual harassment had or had not taken place.
Interestingly in light of the fact that 42 per cent of surveyed victims knew their harasser, respondents were much more likely to say incidents were sexual harassment if the victim did not know the other person.
Where alcohol was involved there was a distinct difference in attitudes between respondents, with one stating that “It depends on how drunk they are”, and another saying that “Drink doesn’t excuse people – [they] didn’t consent.”
If you’d like to find out more about the survey, go to http://www.yusu.org/docs/Zero-