York Socialist Students members

Students at York St John’s University protested against sexual harassment, after a number of recent incidents in the student union bar.

As indicated by a number of students who spoke, these incidents are but the tip of the iceberg. To loud chants of “shame”, students spoke of even worse incidents of sexual harassment and rape on campus, where they have felt let down by the university and its provision of student support.

As several speakers said: “We’re paying almost £10,000 a year to be subjected to this”.

Socialist Students member and York St John student Anna spoke to the protest, raising a number of measures that could improve campus safety, including improved lighting, increasing funding to student support, and more.

And key to implementing that would be ending the marketisation of universities. That means they are starved of funding, as well as ensuring that such measures are under the democratic control of elected representatives of students and campus trade unions.