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

The Leopard-University Newspaper

Hey guys, I have just sent an email to the University Newspaper- The Leopard to see if once we have collated all of our findings we could put a small article in the newspaper. I think this is a great way to spread the word of what we are doing and hopefully make a change.
I will tell you what they say, once I get a response.
Cheers,
Jack.

We're getting there...

So today we finalised the survey by getting 6 more people to do it, and Helen will be completing all of the data analysis so we can put results on the posters that Darcy will kindly be making. We also got some more footage of an non-student. Looking good guys!

SU

Hey guys, I've messaged our Welfare and Diversity Officer at our SU to hopefully organise for her to be interviewed for our project. She'll give us a helpful insight into sexual harrassment and racism at our campus, I'm very excited about this! UPDATE: She's free to interview between 2-4pm on Monday 20th March.

Renters strike supports ending sexual harassment

Also interesting that the S.U. posted this!

Male managers overlook female staff

http://www.standard.co.uk/lifestyle/london-life/male-managers-are-overlooking-their-female-staff-study-reveals-a3489306.html

Pictures of my cat (and update)

On Monday, we got 28 people out of 32 surveyed which was fantastic! I arranged an interview with Sanjay Seth as well, who was very enlightening, myself, Jack and Alba went along to that while Darcy uploaded videos, and Rumman and Sajjad competed more interviews.
I want to upload the voice recordings I have of Sanjay and Elizabeth Evans (Saul would not let me record), but certain things said were off the record. So I may have to listen to them and cut some of it out, but regardless, it's fantastic for context. Osob, have you managed to speak to the S.U. at all yet?
I've made a start on the data analysis. Here it is so far to give people an initial idea of what we have found. Have people checked footage for sound etc?  

Tomorrow, some of us are meeting outside the library around 11-ish to complete the remaining interviews, I have done two control interviews as well so far so I need to speak to 2 more remaining people outside of Goldsmiths. It would be good to have video one of us speaking to the general public for the control group on film. And some b-footage of us walking around/ in the library, generally looking busy.

As we have now completed the initial part of our project, we need to start making some decisions about what happens next with posters, videos, speaking to people in power about our findings etc. 

I also surveyed my cat... 

The 1752 Group

This is a group of people dedicated to battling Sexual Harassment within Higher Education. 

On their WordPress Account they list their strategies for combating harassment in Educational Institutions:

1. Implement an enforceable national code of conduct that clarifies professional boundaries. Address the issue of staff/student relationships directly within institutions.

2. Develop a reporting and complaints process for sexual misconduct/assault, which is sensitive to race/gender identity/sexuality/ability/undisclosed mental health issues.

3. Establish an independent national office for sexual misconduct advocacy and support, with specialist sexual misconduct advisors located within each institution.

4. Ensure all institutions record data and make publicly available reports on all allegations of sexual misconduct.

5. Address the long-term impact of staff sexual misconduct on those who experience it.

6. Implement comprehensive sector-wide and institution-level cultural change.

I'm seeing many similarities between this group and the aforementioned Women in Humanities group 'TORCH'

This is the link to their blog: 1752 Blog

Pictures from Day 1

Interviews

Today we went around interviewing Goldsmith students with 8 questions, the questions mainly revolved around their opinion on goldsmiths faculty when it comes to race and gender. We also showed the participants 6 pictures of different people and gave them 3 options of guessing whether the person was a lecturer, student or general staff. The results were definitely interesting.
Below I have attached a photo Rumman took of us interviewing students on the Goldsmiths green.

Progress...

  

This morning Helen and I met to finalise the Questionnaires and the interview plans.
This questions asked are a melting pot of mine, Jack's and Helen's.

We broke into two groups at first with Helen and I interviewing separate people to Rumman and Sajjad. 
This was building on Jack's idea of seeing if people responded differently to Male/Female or even Asian/White. 

We produced lots of results and footage and later Alba and Jack joined us and we got even more. 

Alba, Jack and Helen went to interview Sanjay and (hopefully!) film him to add to our variety of clips. 

We've interviewed people of mixed ethnicity and gender with very varied results. 
The most surprising being two people who refused to judge what position the headshots held at the uni, because they didn't feel comfortable judging people based on looks. 

We hope to finish the 32 interviews by tomorrow so Alba can edit ASAP. 

Gender and racial bias in hiring study

Was doing some research and came across an interesting study which took place in an American university. It shows how the American faculty remains largely white and male. For example when the study took place full‐time faculty were 86% white and 63% male. Furthermore, African‐ Americans hold only approximately 5% of full‐time faculty positions, almost half of which are in historically black colleges and universities.
The study also explores theories of stereotyping and cognitive biases in hiring. Although the study takes place in America, it might be interesting to compare and contrast with Goldsmiths and also to see if much has changed over the past 10 years.

 I have attached the study below for anyone who is interested in reading more.


http://provost.upenn.edu/uploads/media_items/gender-racial-bias.original.pdf

Goldsmiths paid almost £200k compensation over sexual harassment claims

Very interesting article from the Evening Standard regarding sexual harassment claims within Goldsmiths

http://www.standard.co.uk/news/london/goldsmiths-paid-almost-200k-compensation-over-sexual-harassment-claims-a3483361.html

Man and woman switch names in work

This pretty much sums up our theory. Its also a inform experiment very similar to our own.

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/gender-inequality-man-woman-switch-names-week-martin-schneider-nicky-knacks-pay-gap-a7622201.html

American Students Challenge Campus Racism

USA = Student Activists Nationwide Challenge Campus Racism, and Get Results!

Just some more interesting reading from the Guardian

Brock Turner is a Rapist but its ok because hes white.

https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/sep/02/brock-turner-released-jail-sexual-assault-stan

One of the most current and obvious examples of Sexism on campus is the Turner V. The People case. Where a white, middle class bloke raped a woman on campus and essentially got away with it.

This is interesting because it provides us with the blatant evidence that sexism and rape culture is alive and rife in this day and age. 

This could be essential to our project because it provides us with an extreme example of how University officials, staff and at some point even students prioritise a white man's dreams over basic law and order/ right and wrong. 

We could even dig further and easily find the evidence to say that if rapey Brock had been a Black bloke from a less affluent background he would have, not only served his full sentence, but perhaps even got a longer sentence. Black Brock also would have definitely not have been backed by the American media. This is because, to me, their hierarchical backing goes like this:      

                White Rich Men
White Poor Men/White Rich Women
              White Poor Women
                Rich Black Men
 Poor Black Men/Rich Black Women
                Poor Black Women

As it Stands

After our meeting yesterday we've come up with a final plan of action:

Rumman/Alba are printing off the images of the staff/students and the questionnaire sheets for us to use while interviewing. 

Alba is in charge of renting out the camera and video editing after we've finished filming.

Filming/Interviews will commence this coming Monday. We will meet at 11(ish) and hope to have the interveiwes finished, edited and ready by the end of next week. 

Helen will take all the data and give us the facts and figures to put in our essays and presentation etc.

The questions that will be asked have been approved by the group and are a mixture of mine/Jack's/and Helen's.

Osob is in talks with our freshly elected Welfare and Diversity Officer in trying to get an interview with her.

Helen and Rumman have already begun testing out the interview questions on their mates outside of Goldsmiths and are on to interviewing people for our 'outside of Goldsmiths' control group. 

The plan is to split into two and each have someone filming, someone interviewing the people and then someone(people) to do the excess work if needs be. 





Let me know if I've got any of this wrong and I'll update it.