Well Done Guys!

Well done guys, this was a great group effort!!!
I personally, enjoyed working with you lot and couldn't have asked for a better group!!!
Good Luck with the essay, hope you all get a banging mark.
See you after easter.

Jack.

Posters if this even counts -Thanks a lot Goldsmiths Library

EDUROAM DIED AT QUARTER TO 5 SO I COULDN'T UPLOAD THINGS ON TIME

PLEASE TAKE PITTY ON ME AND ALLOW THE BLOG POST OF POSTERS POSTED AROUND

HEY GUYS!

It's nearly over! This is the link for the video, hope you enjoy it. It's not as refined at it should be but the software was being difficult so I had to use windows movie maker (don't judge me).

https://youtu.be/RwaYzPpnu9o
This was a great experience, thank you all <3

Alba

Everyday Sexim University Thread

The Everyday Sexism Project is basically where women upload their experiences to their website, and Laura Bates (Founder and Author) made it into a book. On the website you can use tags for your story, such as University, Home, Public Sphere, School etc. To illustrate where you experienced harassment.

I clicked on the University link and found plenty of sad stories of women facing harassment at their academic institutions. 

Really good read if anyones interested. Everyday Sexism at Universities

Bearded Lady Project

A group of female Paleontologists are beating the stigma that only men can dig up Dinosaurs. They decided to wear fake beards to work to illustrate that women now make up over 40% of the Paleontology work force, and what better way to show it by obviously, light-heartedly, taking the piss. 

You guys can read the article here

Hey,
So music wise, I've decided to play the XX intro throughout the video, just so when there are pauses it's not as awkward.
Also Jack would it be possible for you to make a video recording of the audio file you sent me? I know it's really last minute, I'm sorry!
Alba

Hey again!

I was wondering if you guys had any music recommendations for the video, we need something for background music, I thought James Brown- Man's World would be nice for an outro too

Alba x

Petition

Here are the petition signatures I got and forgot to upload last night.

Interesting interview we conducted

Also,
Can you guys make sure I have all the footage? I feel like there are a few videos missing? Can we put all the videos on dropbox asap please.
Alba

Hey All,

So I said I'd provide some "rational" material. I found that Kalwant Bhopal has written some amazing stuff on BME in academia.
Also here are a list of links that I used for the initial presentation for our project:
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2013/jan/28/women-bme-professors-academia
https://www.ucu.org.uk/media/5559/Report-The-position-of-women-and-BME-staff-in-professorial-roles-in-UK-HEIs/pdf/The_position_of_women_and_BME_staff_in_professorial_roles_in_UK_HEIs.pdf
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/biased-students-give-bme-academics-lower-nss-scores-says-study
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/educationopinion/11418591/Universities-have-prioritised-the-voices-of-white-privately-educated-men-for-too-long.html
http://www.runnymedetrust.org/blog/the-experiences-of-black-and-minority-ethnic-academics
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-37407540

Hope those help!
Alba

Posters -FINALLY

As you guys can see I wanted my poster to be super super obvious and provocative, especially toward Goldsmiths students. 

I added in the option for them to be able to rip off our email and forward to us any comments they may have about our findings, which we would pass on to the Warden. 

Jack and Helen coined the idea of having an email for people to reach us, and to hopefully add to our army of support. 

Jack has also done his own poster which is a different style to this one. This will be great because it may offer a completely different audience, and so more people to our cause. -Building on the belief that different colours/styles attract different people.

I will be posting these around campus, particularly on the back of toilet doors where it is unavoidable. We hope to get some responses even if its not that many.

I'll print out around 20-30 to try and get the maximum response. 

 

Alba- My Voice recording For Intro to Video.

Hey Alba, I emailed you the voice recording I did for the video, tell me if you got it.

Here is the link to youtube also. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GCgAKTqH894

Cheers,

Jack.

Email to the Warden

So I've sent over an email to the Warden at Goldsmiths - Patrick Loughrey, detailing our research and findings about our project and cc'd you all -


" Dear Mr Patrick Loughrey

We, a collective of second year Politics students, decided to conduct an investigation on the perceptions of race and gender at Goldsmiths University as part of our group project. We are emailing you to present our outcomes of this project which we feel is pertinent to you as the Warden of Goldsmiths. Over the last two months we have conducted interviews, surveys and a petition to gauge the general attitudes of the student and staff population here at our university. Our university suffers from a serious well-publicised sexual-harassment scandal, attainment gap, and a serious lack of diversity when it comes to lecturers, so we felt this project was necessary to undertake as students here. All of our research has been recorded over at http://perceptionofraceandgender.blogspot.co.uk. We have attached here a petition signed by over a 100 students who feel we have a serious problem when it comes to race and gender at Goldsmiths. From our survey that we conducted across our campus, we found fifty-four per cent of students agreed that curriculum across departments are ‘pale, male and stale’. Similar to this at a more alarming number, seventy-five per cent of students said that ‘there were too many males in higher academic roles’ across our university. Our conclusions are that these problems are something that need to be seriously addressed by senior management at Goldsmiths, over 100 staff and students signed our petition for management to take these concerns seriously and make our campus a more representative place. 

Thank you.

Kind regards,

Osob Yusuf, Helen Jewell, Jack Delaney, Darcy Wilson, Alba Turku, Sajjad Haider and Rumman Chowdhury  "

Poster I Made .

Poster Inspiration

I love this because it shows that women may look sweet and pretty on the outside but on the inside they're tough and not to be fucked with. 

A classic, very obvious, minimalist depiction of the inequality women face in the world. I like the simplicity of this.

I love this because it depicts women in masculine roles which are mostly, unfortunately quite unusual. Their accessories being pink suggest that women are putting their own spin on traditionally male jobs. Of course this works both ways, with the blokes accessories being blue, also suggesting that any job can be anyones.

Nothing like cute babies to catch the attention. The message is simple and clear, you don't have to be white/blonde/of European descent to be Swiss. 

The message is super obvious with this one, we had this in my high school so even kids can understand it. The black and white of the image is an ode to how simple it is the grasp the idea of equality. As if it were right and wrong.

The most obvious thing about this image is the sheer diversity and beauty of everyone on the planet. Im presuming the arms belong to children, which makes the poster give off a sweet message, of kinship and innocence. 

African History Plus

Saw this advert for an African History lecture and found it quite intriguing, with the nearly finished Sharpie writing.
The website explains that they're a group who work to enhance social cohesion and to educate about African culture. 
I think having this around campus proves that there is an audience for these kinds of lectures within our uni community, which, if so, shows there will be support for our cause. However the scrappy marker writing suggests the organisation is lacking funding, and so is not supported by the university itself. 
It would be cool to go down to one of the talks to see if they offer a postcolonial perspective also.

Whats left to do

At this current moment in time, we are yet to finish::

- A round number of signatures on the petition

- To possibly present our petition to the Warden or if that fails the deputy Warden 

- To also email it to the new Head of Politics and to try and get a comment

- Post up posters if time is on our side

- Video editing and general polishing up

- And obviously finish our own essays.

Catch up

hey guys let's have one last meeting tomorrow around 12pm.. We can finalise everything and pick up on anything we haven't done already.

What is everyone up to?

I've uploaded the scanned survey for everyone to use in their essays.
Whats everyone else up to video / survey wise? Is there anything else left we need to finish off?

Data

The data is now on dropbox. Please download it to your own computer, if you change anything on it from dropbox, everyone will have your changes. If you have any questions about it, feel free to message me.

List of Black Professors in UK Universities

Following me and Sajjad's conversation with Professor Claudia Bernard, one the few Black professor's within Goldsmiths, she emailed me an interesting article regarding the number of black professors throughout universities in the UK. It is significant to see that there are only 50 black professors which reflects how significant this problem is. It also demonstrates that this is a wider issue and cannot be just generalised to Goldsmiths Univeristy itself. I will put this PDF document on our group dropbox account for you guys to read.

Dropbox

I've created a dropbox account for everyone to upload what we've all been working on:

email: hjewe001@gold.ac.uk
password: lifelifelife123

Hard Copy Petition

How Many Signatures Do We Need For The Petition?

I was thinking about how many signatures we may need, to actually make a difference. We should think of a group target and try reach that if possible. We've got the rest of the week to get as many as possible before we submit it to the warden. Feel free to comment on how many signatures we may need/aim for. 

Ps. It would be nice to have a group meeting this week to consolidate what we have done and what we still need to do etc. 

Also

Also, the fact that some of our peers within Life A User's Manual, were unwilling to sign our petition because they had to go to the pub demonstrates that maybe they are not as passionate about women's and BME rights as they say they are.

Update

Me, Rumman, Alba, Darcy and Sajjad have gone around Uni today collecting signatures. We have got over 100 and the response has been great!!!
We have had a good mix of male and female from all departments. Moreover, we have some staff signatures also.
This shows that staff and students at Goldsmiths genuinely believe there needs to be a greater amount of female and BME lecturers or that they should be in higher job roles.
A lot of students have said that there is a lack of BME lecturers within their departments and that if there were more, this would help in modules that are to do with non-european topics etc.
As well, a lot of people have said that even if there are female or BME lecturers, they are not in the highest positions and they feel that this could be to do with the fact that the majority of higher positions are taken by white males. Additionally, some said that female or BME lecturers are put off going for these positions because they think they have no chance of getting them anyway.
Overall, I think this is a great start. I know some people in Life A User's Manual, were sceptical of what we would be able to achieve by doing this petition but I personally think its a great way to spread awareness and hopefully if we can get a substantial amount of signatures we could make a difference. After all, the point of this module is that we make something political by intervention and as a result try and make an impact/change.
We will continue to get signatures throughout next week.

Online Petition

Hey guys,
So I've published an online petition. However I'd recommend editing it first as a group and maybe campaigning on Monday, I say this because at the moment it looks very first draft and me and Rumman were the only ones who contributed to the explanation of it and you might want to edit it. Also I'd highly recommend make a hard copy petition as opposed to an online one simply to attract more people, it takes less time to write your name and an email address than an online petition. Let me know what you think. The petition is available on my Facebook account if you want to sign it and have a look!
Alba

Petition

I think doing an online petition would be preferential over a paper one for many reasons;

1) More people will sign it - students have already started going home, we can share the petition online in various places to generate more awareness and support, as well as going around campus asking for signatures with a laptop.
2) Practicality - everyone will sign it properly, and everyone's results will be in one place

3) We can share the findings of it easier, we can send the link with the signatures to whomever.

4) We could also possibly use the email addresses we are given to end to share more info with people eg video.

Change is a good website for this kind of thing, it is very helpful in setting up the petition, and gives us help as we go along.

I suggest a title of "Raising awareness of gender and racial perceptions at Goldsmiths"
And getting people to agree that:
"There should be more females and people of colour who make it to higher academic roles such as professor"
"That more should be done to encourage individual lecturers to diversify their curriculum"
"That allegation of racism and sexism should be taken seriously, and more should be done to improve reporting procedure"

Sorry, I'm missing our meeting today, the doctor called me and told me to go in about some test results from the hospital.

Sexual Harassment Week & Goldsmiths on it

  Hi Guys, so as we all know its sexual harassment week this week, and the uni put on this conference yesterday. I am so annoyed I couldn't go because of my job, but did anyone else? Or know of anyone who went? May even be worth dropping the organiser an email to get a comment. 

Another thing I've discovered this week is that Goldsmiths has a 10-Point-Plan when staff and students come to them with what they've experienced. It says on the website how they intend to tackle the issues:


''Here, we set out a 10-point plan to address this issue
This is intended as a starting point for our work in this area. Our intention is for this plan to develop as we work collaboratively to ensure we have a framework that meets the needs and requirements of everyone in the Goldsmiths community.

New post to review and improve the framework around reporting and addressing sexual harassment
Definition of sexual harassment
Establishing an Advisory Board
Training and awareness for students
Training and awareness for staff
Reporting sexual harassment – students
Reporting sexual harassment – staff
Leading the HE response
Policies and guidance

Working with our communities and partners''


This post was written in 2013, so it would be interesting to find out whether they'd completed these goals in 4 years, and if they haven't what's slowed them down?


-I may have an answer here:
On the website, Goldsmiths say how they put a bid into HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council for England) for 'Student Safeguarding on Campus'. And they got what they wanted. Goldsmiths received £2.45 Million.

The website then goes on to quote Deputy Warden, Elisabeth Hill on what she intends to do with the money :

“We have a clear ambition to be sector-leading on these issues. This funding will help us further develop our programme of action to address sexual harassment – and ensure students feel safe and supported at our university.”

Maybe we could follow her up on this, to see if its her priority to spend a large chunk of it on safeguarding against harassment. 

Apologies

Hi everyone,

Sorry for being MIA, I've literally just been discharged from hospital. The data analysis is 75% done, I'm gonna be out of action tomorrow but either me or my boyfriend will finish it off the day after. Again, I'm so sorry but there's nothing I could do!

Whos doing what at present

Bernadette suggested making a note of who's doing what for the sake of the credit reasons and to fulfill the blog a bit more.

Darcy: Currently making the posters but ultimately waiting for the numbers to put stats onto them. 

Helen: Crunching the numbers of the interviews and working out our statistics.

Jack: In talks with the SU Paper and designer of the Petition.

Osob: Video editing and overall getting together of the final piece. In talks with the Welfare and Diversity Officer.

Alba: Also Video editing and helping to get the film together. 

I don't know what Rumman and Sajjad are up to but let me know guys and I'll edit this post as soon as! 

Cheers.

Hints and Tips from Bernadette. PLS READ!!

Hi Everyone, 

Being the only representative of our group today, I had a chat with Bernadette during the class and she said some super important points to help our project. 

1) FINISH EVERYTHING ASAP= We've gotta make sure we finish everything in our responsibility ASAP so we can get on with other tasks within the project.

2) VIDEO= We must must try and finish this ASAP too, and we need to find what our direction of the video is, and why were making it. 

She says we need to make sure it has an impact otherwise it is pointless, she suggests putting it on YouTube. The higher the impact, the higher the value of the project, and the higher the value the higher the mark. 

She suggested we take our video/findings into the public sphere (YouTube) so it can make an impact.

3) PETITION= She didn't really get what the direction of the petition was, and what we hoped to achieve with it. We need to make this very clear. 

She offered ideas of what we could shape our direction around, i.e. Quotas?/Positive Discrimination?

She said if we hand them to the Warden we need to be crystal clear of what we want from him.

Bernadette also suggested we change the Name/Age/Occupation/Signature on the petition to Name/Position/Department/Signature 

4) UPHILL BATTLE = The uni is going to want to suppress what we're doing as much as possible to avoid us exposing its faults. 

I think we should maybe get in touch with the 1752 Group, Goldsmiths SU, etc. and ally ourselves with them so our voice can maybe be protected and heard. This is only going to happen if we have a solid direction and an organised fight.

5) CONTACTING THE PAPER FOR SUPPORT= Basically the same premise as the petition, we need a final, strong direction to hit hard with.

6) FOLLOW UP KEY GROUPS/PEOPLE WE'VE CONTACTED= I.E. Follow up with the 1752 Group, maybe get a final, on the record comment from Saul, etc. 

Cheers guys!

Uni Newspaper

The Uni Newspaper hasn't replied, do you think I should email them again? Or shall I go in and see them?

Unis that list Sexual Abuse as a valid reason for Extenuating Circumstances

The Universities that explicitly accept Sexual Assault as an Extenuating Circumstance

I came across this interesting article on The Tab (So you know its gunna be good). Stating which Uni's in the UK deem any form of Sexual Harassment a valid reason for applying for Extenuating Circumstances. 

The Article reads that in 2015 a Uni of Birmingham Student was raped on her year abroad, and because of the stress and emotional turmoil, failed the year, and was refused Extenuating Circumstances. 
Soon after Students and Birmingham launched an e-petition to try and make the Uni chnage their policy. 
https://www.change.org/p/university-of-birmingham-change-extenuating-circumstances-to-include-students-affected-by-rape-and-sexual-assault

The petition was a success and so the Uni changed their Extentuating Circumstances Policy.

After this change a couple of Unis have followed suit; such as Cardiff. 

The article then goes on to report that it they had contacted certain Unis to ask what their policies on Extenuating Circumstances were and if they specified on Sexual Harassment.

Unis including: Kings, Durham, York,  Liverpool, Loughborough etc. Basically said that although they do not specify that Sexual Assault is a reason for entitlement in their Terms and Conditions. -They will, however listen to each individuals case, and if that includes Sexual Harassment or Abuse then it will be taken very seriously and in most cases will be permit the Student to Extenuating Circumstances. 

A third of BAME people have witnessed or experienced racial abuse since Brexit vote

This goes some way for our project rational.
Post-Brexit Britain, are people experiencing more racism since the referendum? Is this true in Goldsmiths?

http://labourlist.org/2017/03/one-in-three-bame-people-have-witnessed-or-experienced-racial-abuse-since-brexit-vote/

Highlights;

Two-fifths, 41 per cent, have witnessed racist remarks or opinions, and 38 per cent have seen racist material online. Just over a quarter, 27 per cent, have seen racist graffiti, posters or leaflets.

The TUC want to see the government:

• Bring in rules about third-party harassment, which protect workers who deal with the public such as shop workers, street cleaners and bus drivers from abuse at work
• Develop a full race equality strategy, which includes tough action to crack down on harassment and discrimination at work, online and in everyday life
• Make sure the Equalities and Human Rights Commission has enough funding to take more legal cases and make sure the law reflects how contemporary racism plays out
• Make private sector companies responsible for promoting equal treatment throughout their activities just as public sector organisations already are.

(Disclosure: this is from a Labour supporting website, so it does have an agenda)

My Email to Dr Kate

Hi Kate, 

We are a group of Second Year Politics students, and for one of our modules we've chosen to do a project on how students/staff think of Race and Gender within Goldsmiths. 

We saw your open letter to a new Female Computing Student and we loved it, and thought you'd have some very valid opinions of the treatment of women at Goldsmiths.

For our project we were wondering if we could get a comment from you, to quote in our final video, on how you think Goldsmiths is towards its women. 

More specifically if you think there are any aspects the uni can improve on; i.e. employing more female lecturers, educating men to be more respectful within the uni, if you think there's an imbalance of male to female Academic Staff etc. 

Or what you think the uni does well in this area; like the acknowledgement of Sexual Harassment Week etc.

We look forward to hearing from you, 

Best Wishes, 

Darcy. 

Trading DNA for an Interview

Osob, Helen and I also traded our Stem Cells 
for an interview with the guy who 
was running it in the Library. 
We are really putting our all into the research!

                                                                               

    

Dr Kate/Uploaded Videos/Posters

Hi guys, I have emailed Dr Kate from the Computing Dept. to see if she has any comment to pop into our video, following her 'An Open Letter to the Female Computing Student'.

I've also uploaded the final batch of videos I had on my camera, onto Facebook for all to see. The majority of them are still videos for us to add commentary over. For example I think itll look good to quote Dr Kate by having the quote over the background of the still video, and someone reading it over in the commentary, whilst beforehand giving a bit of context. Thoughts?

This is the kind of style I mean:::
Channel 4 Style Video 

I'm gunna start designing the posters today, but process won't really pick up until after Tuesday when my Pol Theory Essay is done. But I'm also thinking it won't take me that long. 

Response from 1752 Group

Interesting Interview...

This is a snippet of one of the many interviews we have done, but this part of the interview particularly stood out to me.

*We should also check the sound quality of some of our interviews to make sure they are perfect*

Draft of petition on race and gender at goldsmiths

We, a group of second year Politics students at Goldsmiths are looking at the perception of race and gender at Goldsmiths University. We want to try and make apparent the prejudice that many in our Western society have against women and people from an ethnic background in regards to job prospects.

At a higher educational level, we believe that there should be a greater amount of female lecturers and lecturers from an ethnic background in higher job roles.

Therefore, we are starting this petition to get you, the students and staff of Goldsmiths to support our notion by signing this petition.

Hopefully, if we get a sufficient amount of signatures, we can put this petition forward to those in charge at Goldsmiths and make a difference.

Name	Age	Occupation	Signature