Collaboration for better prevention, reporting and support: An Interview with Anna Dodridge

Interview with Anna Dodridge, an expert in working on sexual violence prevention and support in university contexts. She is passionate about collaborating with young people to build strong, collectivised and vibrant student communities. At the time of interviewing, Dodridge was the Report and Support Project Officer in the Student Services team at Imperial College London.

Location: Zoom (London, England, UK and Canberra, Australia!)

Dodridge has worked in the higher education sector for 20 years in delivering and managing support services, mostly in student unions. Originally starting out as a case worker and then transitioning into manager positions across multiple universities, she has a wealth of experience. I was connected with Dodridge by Aitch Farley who I met with in London, as they both worked together at the SOAS Students' Union.

Following her work at the SOAS Students' Union in prevention, Dodridge started a role with Imperial College London to provide response and support. In her role as the Report and Support Project Officer, Dodridge was responsible for addressing sexual violence, harassment and bullying through prevention, education, intervention and access to support. She supported the university's volunteer Sexual Violence Liaison Officers (SVLOs) to receive disclosures from students and provide emotional support to victim-survivors. SVLOs are people who are employed as staff members at the universities but volunteer their time as SVLOs to support the community.

These SVLOs were trained by LimeCulture (which I interviewed and wrote a blog about here) through a government grant following the 2016 Changing the Culture report. Later, when Dodridge recruited the second round of SVLOs, she worked with the local rape crisis centre to deliver training to them. However, it has been difficult to maintain enough trained SVLOs due to the limited funding available. 

When Dodridge and I spoke about reporting avenues at university, she spoke about how students can leave the process more distressed than when they started. On the one hand, reporting can (and should be) about ensuring students can get help from the university and hold their perpetrator/s accountable. On the other hand, there will always be an incentive for institutions to protect themselves and to stop students from complaining by not having processes in place.

SOAS has a strong activism and abolitionist presence on campus that has influenced their reporting procedures, such as through adopting more restorative and transformative approaches. This has been important for the student community at SOAS, as many victim-survivors were telling Dodridge and others that they want perpetrators to know what they have done, recognise it, understand it and not do it to someone else.

Activism for Dodridge is about reflecting, practising and taking action.

“You can't just reflect and think about things, but you also can’t just be an activist and not reflect, because then you don’t learn.”

A struggle for many activists is that they are passionate about making changes for an issue that directly affects them, which may mean that they don't always have the support to reflect and learn. The people who are meant to support activists, like student unions, have lost their way and tend not to support them. Similarly, universities are risk averse and the relationships they have with students tend to be very tense.

“This work would not be anywhere near where we are now without the activists, gender researchers and scholars, because this is where activists are learning.”

Student unions are really important organisations within university structures, but they also can be places where lots of bullying, harassment, violence and discrimination occurs. They are also places where lots of students who experience harm and violence go for help, but the students responding often have limited training and resources to be able to provide that support. At SOAS, there were staff researchers and student activists coming together to use tools and resources to address campus sexual violence. This linkage between faculty and students proved to be important in developing programs (like Aitch did, which I wrote about here) in preventing sexual violence and for students to be able to access better support.

In solidarity,

Camille Schloeffel

References / Learn more:

• https://www.imperial.ac.uk/student-support-zone/student-services/

• https://www.imperial.ac.uk/

• https://soasunion.org/

• https://limeculture.co.uk/

• https://www.universitiesuk.ac.uk/what-we-do/policy-and-research/publications/changing-culture

• https://www.soas.ac.uk/