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The Impact of Listening to Student Voices: University of York

Writer's picture: Camille SchloeffelCamille Schloeffel

I was able to conduct two interviews of people from the University of York on Zoom on my return to Australia.

  1. Hannah Nimmo, the Community and Wellbeing Officer of the University of York Students' Union (YUSU).

  2. Nicola Campbell, Head of Student Conduct and Respect at the University of York.

I was connected to both Hannah Nimmo and Nicola Campbell by Kelly Balmer, co-founder of The Last Taboo and student activist when she studied at the University of York. While I unfortunately had to cancel my in-person trip to the University of York to speak with Nimmo, Campbell and a few others, I was lucky to still be able to speak to them on my return to Australia.

Location: Zoom (University of York, York, England, UK and Canberra, Australia!)


Hannah Nimmo

Hannah Nimmo is standing in a bright red flower dress smiling in front of a lake.
Hannah Nimmo

Hannah Nimmo is in her second term as the Community and Wellbeing Officer of the Student Union at the University of York. She was also a student representative on the University of York's Sexual Violence Steering Committee and previously ran the Red Flag Campaign UK. The Red Flag Campaign was started by students to help those who are trapped in toxic, abusive or controlling relationships. The Campaign was focused on helping people spot the signs of abuse, know where they can seek support and guidance, as well as bring about peer support networks of people affected by abuse.

Nimmo's role is mostly about dealing with student issues in the community, and especially issues that impact on student wellbeing, such as sexual violence, sexual health and discrimination. Nimmo is extremely passionate about supporting people who have experienced violence through her involvement in the Red Flag Campaign and as a student leader. Her ultimate goal is to make significant changes to students’ lives at the university. One of the ways she is doing this is by working with Student Minds, a student mental health charity, to deliver Look after your mate training to support student leaders to provide informal peer support to others.

“Students feel most comfortable talking to students. We need to train students to support others while ensuring we are not further burdening students to take on trauma and not receive support themselves.”

Having seen models where staff are trained to support other members of staff, Nimmo’s platform for election to the Student Union was to set up something similar for students. This sort of training equips students to be able to sit down and explain the options available to them following abuse, so that the victim-survivor can make an informed decision. It's not about recommending avenues for support and report but asking, 'what would you like to do?'.

“We shouldn’t force students into boxes.”

An Activist at Heart
“I am an activist at heart.”

Nimmo is very passionate about ending sexual violence and domestic abuse. As a survivor herself, she explained how she is learning from things she has experienced and working to ensure others don’t experience the same.

“I want to make positive change and make the world I live in a better place and the way to do that is to campaign. This is what is most important to me and it's what is most important for the students that I work for.”

Nimmo spoke about how she believes that domestic violence, sexual violence and sexual health should all be addressed separately, as when they are clumped together something always gets lost or priorities shift. I agree with this sentiment as I often see sexual violence become a footnote in programs that are meant to address domestic violence and sexual violence together. Having specific issues that certain campaigns/programs are seeking to address can help the outcomes be clearer and more achievable in making a meaningful difference.

Nimmo focused on domestic abuse in her role with the York Branch of the Red Flag Campaign UK. She was particularly trying to campaign for family violence to be addressed at the university as it has family housing and couple rooms available on campus. At the University of York, Nimmo and her team secured emergency accommodation where people can be safely moved to - especially for those in family/couple rooms who may be at a higher risk of further harm in these settings. She acknowledged that while women’s shelters and local charities can help for people experiencing domestic abuse in the home, they do not meet the unique needs of students who need to access the campus for facilities like the library and/or to attend class. Now, there are sexual violence liaison officers on campus to provide specialist support.

The role of the Student Union

Student unions act as the facilitator between staff and students so that students can understand how to navigate the university system. Whether people get elected to the student union at the University of York depends on their relationship with the students. Nimmo ran on a platform of transparency, acknowledging that students often know conversations are happening in the student union but don’t know what is being discussed and promising to change that.

An issue Nimmo has observed within her role is how the university administration always goes to the student union to get the ‘student voice’, rather than going to students directly. Nimmo makes it clear that the university needs to actually talk to students, as when this isn't done it is problematic and change is slow. This is very similar to universities in Australia as very rarely have I seen any sort of consultation on anything related to sexual violence with students. Usually, a university staff member speaks to the President of their student union or Women's Officer at their university as the only student consultation on that matter. And rarely do I see those officers organising for students to feed into their views or even let them know what information they are telling the university 'on behalf of the student body'.

At the University of York, the student union has a good relationship with the university but must maintain engagement with students, especially residential halls as they risk becoming disconnected. An interesting structure they have (that was new to me) was how their college-specific student committees report to the student union and the university administration. This regular contact creates more interconnected communications so that everyone knows what everyone is doing and can work together more easily. On top of this, the student union facilitates communication between colleges and ensures they collaborate on different activities. For example, one college had a sexual health and awareness week planned, so the student union jumped in to help to make it a university-wide week across all of the colleges. As student union representatives are paid, it made sense that they took on this coordination role compared to the unpaid student representatives in the colleges.

Prevention of sexual violence at the University of York
“All students deserve equality of opportunity.”

One of the main issues at the university is the pervasive 'lad culture' on campus which consists of a culture of male behaviour that is degrading towards women, particularly in nightlife and in sport. This is something Nimmo and the Sport President in the student union are trying to address. York is also a very expensive place to live, which means it attracts people who attended private and single-sex schools where this sort of misogynistic behaviour can be more extreme.

The University of York is focused on prevention of sexual violence through initiatives like how to keep students safe on nights out and educating students on consent and respectful relationships. However, Nimmo spoke about how there is a lack of investment in report and support options for students. When Nimmo reported, she was passed around to different people at the university for various reporting and support avenues - so much so that she dropped the case. As a result, Nimmo has been advocating for the university to implement a more centralised system so that there is minimised contact for victim-survivors.


Nicola Campbell

University of York logo
University of York logo

Nicola Campbell is the Head of Student Conduct and Respect at the University of York. She used to work in a Sexual Assault Referral Centre and approaches her work through a trauma-focused perspective.  

“One of the biggest challenges of entering this work is that by training I am an advocate and have a combat perspective. It’s about still doing it for the same reasons but learning how to be a part of the system.”

Campbell studied counselling and started working in rape crisis when she was a student. Eventually, Campbell became the Chair of a rape crisis centre and trained as an independent sexual violence advisor supporting people attending court. Then, she joined the University of York around the same time that #MeToo broke in 2017. The 2016 Changing the Culture Report by Universities UK on examining violence against women, harassment and hate crime affecting university students also changed everything. This report, combined with the global conversations and activism as a result from the #MeToo movement, shifted Campbell's role from a one person team to a team of eight full-time investigators and sexual violence experts.

Then in 2020, students started an activist group, The Last Taboo, and criticised the university for not doing enough. This is when Campbell and her team responded by publishing a sexual violence action plan and establishing a sexual violence steering group.

“The little things are the big things.”

Campbell and her team also introduced practical support for students, such as a free taxi service for student victim-survivors to attend local sexual assault referral services in the community and for attending exams and other important appointments.

The way that Campbell and her team started to better respond to campus sexual violence was by listening to student voices, reflecting on the issues being brought forward and implementing changes. One of these key changes was to separate out the policies for how the university deals with sexual misconduct and plagiarism (as they were regulated in the same policy document). They split the procedures into:

  1. Non-academic misconduct, 

  2. Academic misconduct.

They then opened consultation to everyone in the University of York community to rewrite the non-academic misconduct policy. This included looking at the language of the regulation and ensuring it:

  • reflected the community,

  • took a safeguarding approach up front, and

  • focused on the culture on campus.

Campbell also intentionally recruited people to her team from the sexual violence sector to make sure they didn't have ex-police or lawyers as investigators, but instead had people with subject-matter expertise and previous experience supporting victim-survivors. Campbell leads her team in a way that strives for their services to be trauma-led with ongoing training for all investigators on the legal elements. This training is delivered by/informed by resources from local rape crisis centres and the 1752 Group, a research, consultancy and campaign organisation dedicated to ending staff sexual misconduct in higher education.

Institutional buy-in at the University of York
“Senior leadership buy-in is essential.”

Campbell asked a senior leadership member of the university to chair the sexual violence steering committee when it was established, deciding on a more 'impartial leader' that did not directly lead any of the student wellbeing work. She also invited members of the 1752 Group and The Last Taboo to sit on the group so that their expertise was in the room.

The Chair's role is to be present to listen and learn from the people around the table. Campbell would invite different experts to sit at the table, such as sector representatives, the local sexual violence advisor, the police liaison, the CEO of the local rape crisis and members of the undergraduate and postgraduate student unions. Together, these representatives would brainstorm how to implement new initiatives on campus.

“If you are relying on people to ‘happen to care’ there is a problem and that is not good enough.”

Hearing Campbell say this made me reflect on how poor the practice is in Australia. This is all I have been relying on since I started my activism journey - for someone to care. But even when people did appear to care at the beginning, other priorities - such as money, power or reputation - would trump sexual violence prevention.

In the UK, reputational damage is shifting from being caused by 'sexual violence doesn’t happen here' attitudes, to being seen by the public as not doing anything. This senior leadership narrative of 'rape doesn’t happen here' is another way for universities to remain silent on the issue. Again, I have spoken with senior leaders (and student union executives) at Australian universities who still say that The STOP Campaign isn't needed because they don't have rape on their campus. So, while some universities in Australia may be owning up to what happens on campus, there are many that are still failing to even acknowledge that it is happening at all (even when we have data of its high prevalence in Australia in the 2021 National Student Safety Survey).

The University of York has partnered with Culture Shift in using their anonymous Report & Support system since 2020. One of the most important questions in this reporting form asks why they have reported anonymously, with a range of options to choose from. This data directly informs their campaigns to demystify the report and support system and demonstrate how they are addressing concerns. Transparency is an important pillar for Campbell's work and she believes that this is essential to building trust with students and the broader community.

I asked Campbell what she thinks about lumping issues like sexual violence and domestic violence together versus having separate focuses for these issues. She agreed with Nimmo that we can’t lump sexual violence in with all misconduct and emphasised that we need to treat it in its unique truth.

“We’re not treating sexual violence the same as other forms of harassment because it’s not the same and requires specialist attention.”

Campbell and her team instead focus on intersectionality of experiences rather than clumping harm types together in one office, action plan or strategy. They look at links but do not bring everything into one office so nobody receives specialist support because the office is too generalised. When people tell Campbell that they should focus on other forms of harassment, her answer is that sexual violence needs to be a priority and she explains to them why sexual violence is the most present problem.

Lastly, Campbell shared with me an article on Seeking campus justice: challenging the ‘criminal justice drift’ in United Kingdom university responses to student sexual violence and misconduct that highlights the need for more tailored, transformative and trauma-informed processes for addressing student sexual violence and misconduct within higher education institutions.

By all accounts, the University of York - with leadership from Hannah Nimmo, Nicola Campbell, and previously Kelly Balmer - is making a lot of progress in listening to student voices and meaningfully addressing sexual violence. The fact that a student activist even referred me to the student union and the university administration in a positive way as to how they are both such amazingly trauma-informed and survivor-centred leaders is phenomenal. There is so much that we can learn from the University of York - even if it's not perfect.

In solidarity,

Camille Schloeffel


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