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Word Count Excluding Bibliography: 1803 words.

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Solidarities Power Differences - Essay - Student Number 18394011

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I remember when watching this clip from the RTÉ Archive I was shocked with the comments made by a number of the men throughout the clip. And what made me more shocked was this clip was from 1990.

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Despite advances made by the women's rights movement, stereotypical male chauvinism is alive and well in Ireland.

For decades the women's movement in Ireland has fought for rights and equality. While attitudes in 1990 are more enlightened, the age of equality remains an aspiration. Stereotypical male chauvinism is alive and well on Irish streets, in the workplace and in the schools and universities.

Some men on Grafton Street in Dublin are not happy with the impact the women's rights movement is making on their lives. One man is convinced it has had a detrimental effect on his mother. Another sees the problem for men started when women started to patronise the lounge bar in pubs.

Chauvinism is rampant in the workplace where there are deep seated attitudes regarding which professions that should be done by men and which are for women.

Chauvinism still makes women secretaries and men mechanics.

Up until 1974 it was accepted that married women would leave their jobs as soon as they became married.

Women will no longer put up with an attitude that says your life basically involves going to school, working for a couple of years and rearing a family after that.

A rubgy player thinks women have no right to be at work and definitely have no place running for the position of President of Ireland. A woman's place is in the home,

It's been the way of the world for years, why should it change now all of a sudden.

Gender attitudes are formed early and some school children have clear ideas about gender and work. One boy is clear his father should not do housework because

It seems like a girl's job.

Students in University College Dublin (UCD) are debating the motion 'That Sid the Sexist is alive and well and living in UCD'. Some of the male students at UCD believe women's liberation has turned women into militants prepared to attack men on any issues. One student feels men cannot win because,

When you give them they want they say you are being patronising and if you don't they say you are discriminating.

Another UCD student fears that in striving for equality, women have lost their sense of humour.

This episode of 'Scratch Saturday' was broadcast on 10 November 1990.

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Despite advances made by the women's rights movement, stereotypical male chauvinism is alive and well in Ireland. For decades the women's movement in Ireland has fought for rights and equality. While attitudes in 1990 are more enlightened, the age of equality remains an aspiration.

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Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin: Two years of harassment at UCD

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Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin: Two years of harassment at UCD

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I remember when I heard Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin's story I was shocked that a thing like this could occur. However, I realise now it does not matter your age or profession you could still be a victim of sexual harassment/violence. And your perpetrator does not have to be a man wearing a hoodie in a dark alleyway. Therefore, I believe our programme should include UCD staff also rather than solely focusing on the student body.

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One of Ireland's best known academics was repeatedly harrassed by a professor at UCD over the course of two years

She was frightened of being alone on campus and unnerved almost to the point of abandoning her successful academic career. This was the reality of workplace harassment for one of Ireland's best-known academic figures.

Dr Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin - a broadcaster, lecturer in University College Dublin (UCD) and role model to young women in maths and science - was repeatedly harassed by a professor at UCD over the course of two years.

Her ordeal ended in a court case in late 2019 when the man, Prof Hans-Benjamin Braun, 58, was charged with harassment under section 10 of the Non-Fatal Offences Against the Person Act, 1997. The court heard the harassment took place between May 9th, 2015, and July 7th, 2017, and issued an order barring the professor from contacting Ní Shúilleabháin for five years.

Ní Shúilleabháin is now speaking out about her experience, which she says left her living in fear, in order to draw attention to the harassment of female university academics and students on university campuses in Ireland. She says it's vital that victims of harassment are encouraged to report their experiences.

The incidents she experienced included Braun turning up to her office in an angry and agitated state, repeatedly asking her out on dates, sending her unsolicited emails, persistently telephoning her, arriving unannounced at her meetings, and on one occasion getting a student to phone her to inform her that he was telling nurses in a hospital he was in that he loved her.

The incidents left her frightened, and negatively impacted on both her personal and professional life.

Ní Shúilleabháin had no professional relationship with the professor. She repeatedly reported the incidents to a UCD human resources department, furnishing them with detailed notes of various incidents, before eventually taking the matter outside of the university - at the college's suggestion - and reporting it to the Garda. The harassment lasted for two years after her first bringing it to the attention of the university.

Ní Shúilleabháin felt dissuaded from making a formal complaint against the professor

Gardaí in Donnybrook investigated, culminating in the 2019 court case. Ní Shúilleabháin did not attend but was informed of the outcome. She declined to make a victim impact statement at the time due to concerns for her privacy, but in recent months has felt her experience could help instigate what she feels is much-needed cultural change on campuses across the country in addressing harassment and supporting those who have been harassed.

She also made a formal complaint to UCD after contacting the Garda. Although early in her ordeal, lodging such a complaint was characterised to her as an arduous process; in the end, for her, it amounted to one phone call from an external investigator.

Ní Shúilleabháin felt dissuaded from making a formal complaint against the professor. When The Irish Times put it to UCD that she felt dissuaded, the university replied that it would not comment on an individual case.

At one point, Braun travelled across the country and turned up at a hotel in Cork demanding to see her after Ní Shúilleabháin had mentioned on social media that she was on a weekend break with female friends. The professor was removed by gardaí from the hotel twice, on two consecutive days, and Ní Shúilleabháin received a Garda escort out of Co Cork.

Ní Shúilleabháin spent the week in the run-up to her wedding fearful that Braun would contact her or turn up. Before becoming engaged to her now husband, she moved into a new home alone, and kept a crowbar close by for safety.

In February 2020, UCD launched a "report and support" website where students, staff or visitors to UCD can report bullying, harassment and sexual harassment anonymously.

Asked to contribute to this article, Tristan Aitken, UCD's director of human resources, told The Irish Times that the college "cannot comment on any individual case" and that "UCD had a zero-tolerance policy on sexual harassment".

"It takes every report of sexual harassment or sexual misconduct, in any form, very seriously."

He confirmed that Braun "is no longer employed by the university". Aitken said the university's dignity and respect policy and procedure was last reviewed in 2017, "and is further currently under review". He said the university "takes serious note of the outcomes of these cases to improve the university's policy and procedure".

In correspondence with Ní Shúilleabháin, UCD HR has acknowledged that delays and a lack of communication of some of their HR procedures, which they characterised as "failings", caused Ní Shúilleabháin, in their words, "otherwise avoidable distress". It has since involved Ní Shúilleabháin in a review of policy and procedures, at her request.

Ní Shúilleabháin began working in UCD in autumn 2014 on a temporary assignment. When her PhD was completed, she was contracted as an assistant lecturer. The harassment began in 2015 when Braun interrupted a lunch meeting to discuss an outreach event, saying that he hoped they would be working on it at the same time. He then emailed her about the event, called the "Pint of Science", saying he could ask the organisers to put them on the same night.

"I was completely bewildered and baffled by this, and had never had a conversation with him about it," Ní Shúilleabháin says.

The following week, on a Thursday in May 2015, Braun arrived unannounced to her office and asked her on a coffee date. "I wasn't expecting it, so I just said, 'Well, I'm actually seeing somebody' - which was a lie at the time."

"He wouldn't take no for an answer," she says. "So he was there really trying to convince me that we had to go for coffee together at some unknown point. I was stuck behind my desk . . . So I just actually put my two hands on the desk and I said: 'I would like you to leave my office now.' So he left."

She phoned a colleague who told her to report it to HR. "And I said: 'I'll do it tomorrow.'"

The following day, Braun turned up at her office again. "He barged in . . . dropped his umbrella, I think he took off his jacket. He was drenched. And he just started pacing back and forth and saying things like, you know, 'You haven't been honest with me, I've been very honest with you about my feelings, I don't do this very often, I don't ask people out, you have lied basically and you haven't been honest about how you feel about me.' He was really in a frantic state."

Braun eventually left her office, leaving Ní Shúilleabháin shaken. That day, Ní Shúilleabháin was travelling to Cork for "a girls' weekend", and resolved to report the incidents to HR the following Monday.

But that weekend, when she was in a hotel in west Cork, the receptionist rang to say a man was in the lobby with a bunch of flowers asking to see her. Ní Shúilleabháin asked the receptionist to say she was out, but the receptionist came back to say: "He doesn't believe me because your car is outside."

I asked the dean to walk with me to my office so I wouldn't be on my own at any point

"I was really worried at that point," says Ní Shúilleabháin. "Oh my god, he knows my car."

The hotel called the Garda, who led the professor away. Later that evening, Braun rang Ní Shúilleabháin's mobile number, which she had not given him. She hung up when she heard his voice.

After Braun turned up at the hotel again the following morning, the Garda was called again. Ní Shúilleabháin's party were given a Garda escort out of the county, "which was just incredibly stressful . . . The whole weekend was."

Back on campus on Monday morning, Ní Shúilleabháin met the dean of her school and reported the incident to HR, who advised her to work from home for a few days. "I asked the dean to walk with me to my office so I wouldn't be on my own at any point."

It was May 2015. In the months and years that followed, Ní Shúilleabháin would have multiple interactions with HR in UCD, keeping detailed accounts of every incident.

At one point, she received a phone call from one of the professor's students, "who was giving me an update on his health in case I wanted to know - that he was doing fine, the professor was doing fine in hospital and he was telling all the nurses that he was in love with me. I had never met that student before. I told him not to contact me, that I didn't want to know anything about Prof Braun . . .

"And so in my mind, this was all going to get resolved, because the right people knew about it . . . And then he eventually came back to UCD again." This, says Ní Shúilleabháin was "really where the system started to break down".

Ní Shúilleabháin was told by university staff that Braun had been told not to contact her. However, in December 2015 he emailed her "to find someone who could take over his fourth year advanced quantum mechanics module. Now, as much as I love the sound of advanced quantum mechanics, it's not something I can lecture in. So it seemed like an incredibly odd email to send me of all people. So I didn't respond." She forwarded it on to HR.

The following week, Braun turned up at her office again. She asked him to leave, which he did, and she reported the incident to HR again.

The incidents continued, ranging in severity, including Braun staring at her while she held meetings with other colleagues in open-plan settings on campus, and repeatedly turning up to her office.

"I told him that he was asked not to contact me. I asked him to leave my office. He didn't leave my office. And then he started to go on that this year had been very tough for him, that he had developed really strong feelings for me, and he said: 'I don't want you to be scared of me', that this was all a misunderstanding."

In March 2016, over the course of one weekend, she received 25 phone calls in a row, followed by 19 phone calls the following day. "It was particularly distressing because I was at a work gig on the Saturday and I was really afraid that he would turn up at it. He didn't."

The following week he approached her again in the university while she was meeting a colleague. "He was lingering by kind of peering around a corner, which was quite creepy, then he approached me, and I just said: 'I'm in a meeting and you're not allowed speak to me.' Again, I told HR."

In July 2016, Braun approached her again during a meeting. "It was just exhausting." Later that day, he came to her office again. She phoned her colleague in an office close by, who told the professor to stay away from her office.

According to Ní Shúilleabháin, around this time Braun had received a written warning from a senior university faculty member. "Nothing happened then for a couple of months, so maybe the warning did work at some point," Ní Shúilleabháin says.

Even if something didn't happen, you were always on edge wondering if it would happen

However, in January 2017 he approached her again while she was meeting a colleague for coffee on campus. "He was queueing for coffee. I didn't want to go near him, so I kind of stayed away at the doors so my colleague could see me, but Prof Braun saw me and he walked past me, kind of almost expecting to bump into me on purpose, and that didn't happen because I was trying to keep myself very small. So he turned around, came back 30 seconds later and just put out his hand and said 'happy new year', and I just said: 'No, go away.' Thankfully my colleague was coming, so I was able to go and meet him.

"It sounds very innocuous, but I guess after all of the repeated incidents you just get very nerve-racked."

Although Ní Shúilleabháin says Braun was repeatedly told by university officials not to contact her, he continued to intrude on conversations and meetings on campus, as well as turning up at her office.

In May 2017, she locked herself into her office when he arrived at the door, "He kept knocking and then he eventually left. When he left, I was kind of frozen, actually. I didn't know what to do."

It had been more than two years since the harassment began, and Ní Shúilleabháin decided "this has to stop".

"I was really just getting afraid with all of it, because even if something didn't happen, you were always on edge wondering if it would happen, wondering when he would next turn up at a meeting, or at your office. The mental energy that it took, I really felt that it impacted on me personally, but on my professional work as well because you just couldn't concentrate properly for all that time."

After yet another complaint to HR, Ní Shúilleabháin says a person working in the HR department said her "best bet" was to go to the Garda. Ní Shúilleabháin asked the HR worker to arrange an appointment with gardaí, which they did, and a detective was assigned to the case.

"I was getting married at this point. I was really, really, really afraid that he would turn up on my wedding day. I got a few more phone calls from him, in July of that year, July 2017, in the run-up to my wedding - one I answered because I didn't recognise the number . . . I blocked all the numbers after that, made a statement to the guards."

The Garda investigation culminated in a court case in late 2019. An order barring Braun from contacting Ní Shúilleabháin was issued by the court. She eventually made a formal complaint to UCD about the harassment in August 2018, and while she was on maternity leave in 2019 she received an email from UCD saying Braun was leaving the university.

That's why I wanted to talk about it. The first thing we need to do is recognise that it's a problem

Following her formal complaint, Ní Shúilleabháin received one phone call from an external investigator. "I was expecting great things from this formal complaint because it had been bigged up to me that it was going to be a very arduous process," Ní Shúilleabháin says. The investigator did her job well, according to Ní Shúilleabháin, but she says she expected more. "She just said, 'Yeah, the complaint is valid and we uphold it.' And that was that.

"It was very disappointing within UCD that this had been hyped up to me as something that was going to be very, very difficult for me to do, but it wasn't at all in the slightest."

When contacted by The Irish Times to contribute to this article, Braun said he had no comment to make.

Today, Ní Shúilleabháin says that while there is growing awareness regarding harassment and other issues for students on campuses, "we also need to make sure those same supports are there for staff, and particularly early-career researchers. Those are the people who are on precarious contracts, temporary contracts, who are maybe doing a post-doc which is one or two years, who might be very afraid to rock the boat because it will impact, potentially, on them getting another contract.

"That's why I wanted to talk about it. The first thing we need to do is recognise that it's a problem, and after that we need to look at what are the many ways we can address it.

"I'm not saying that I'm going to change the system. There's a lot of people working on that. But I actually just think being more open about it and speaking about these incidents is really important because we have to stop sweeping them under the carpet. That carpet is getting very, very bulgy now."

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Aoibhinn Ní Shúilleabháin: Two years of harassment at UCD

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One of Ireland's best known academics was repeatedly harrassed by a professor at UCD over the course of two years She was frightened of being alone on campus and unnerved almost to the point of abandoning her successful academic career. This was the reality of workplace harassment for one of Ireland's best-known academic figures.

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#ItStopsNow: End Sexual Violence and Harassment in College

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#ItStopsNow: End Sexual Violence and Harassment in College

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Prior to researching the topic of sexual assault/violence I was unaware of the #ItStopsNow Movement. Perhaps this was my ignorance or maybe it demonstrates how the movement is not publicized enough. Throughout the attached video examples of incidents of sexual assault and phrases used around the topic clearly demonstrates the need for change.

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#ItStopsNow: End Sexual Violence and Harassment in College

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Solidarities Power Differences - Exercise 10 Reflective Piece - Student Number - 18394011

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Solidarities Power Differences - Exercise 9 Reflective Piece - Student Number 18394011

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Solidarities Power Differences - Exercise 8 Reflective Piece - Student Number - 18394011

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Solidarities Power Differences - Exercise 7 Reflective Piece - Student Number -18394011

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The common feature in talks about sexual violence/assault is relating the woman to males, 'imagine she is your daughter'. This image which I saw on social media in response to Sarah Everard's murder reminded me of Bery's talk on 'The Burden of White Empathy' in which she mentioned how the black man needed to be humanized for the judge to show him empathy. Similarly the roles of sister, mother, daughter, wife, in my view are a method to humanize women in the eyes of men when discussing the issue of sexual assault/violence. Why should women be viewed as a connection to a male, why can she not just be seen as a human?

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This video based on consent was shown to the first year students when I was a Peer Mentor in second year. This was my first time seeing the video. However, the majority of the first year students in the group had already seen the video in secondary school. This therefore got me thinking of my secondary school experience in a small town in rural Ireland. In my Catholic Secondary School the topic of consent was rarely mentioned; if ever if I can remember correctly. However, the students who attended secondary schools in Dublin appeared to have had discussions on these topics during their school experience. This made me think of the divide between rural and urban Ireland, the role of religion in secondary schools, and the view of women in society in an Irish context.

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UCD’s Commitment to ending Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment

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UCD’s Commitment to ending Sexual Violence and Sexual Harassment

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UCD is committed to the promotion of a culture, for work and study, which upholds the dignity and respect of the individual and which supports their right to study and/or work in an environment which is free from all forms of discrimination. This is supported in the University strategy " Rising to the Future 2020-2024" through its strategic objectives to "provide an inclusive educational experience" and to "attract, retain and develop and excellent and diverse cohort of students, faculty and staff". Promoting a culture of dignity and respect and wellbeing is also a strategic objective of the UCD Equality, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI) Strategy.

UCD is actively promoting a culture of zero tolerance to sexual violence and sexual harassment for all members of our University community and this webpage provides information on the actions that have been undertaken and are ongoing to achieve this.

Ending Sexual Violence and Harassment in Third Level Education (ESHTE)

UCD is one of the founding members of the National Women's Council of Ireland (NWCI) National Advisory Committee (NAC) relating to ending sexual violence and harassment in third level education (ESHTE). This came about through the creation of a position paper which was brought to, and endorsed by, the University Management Team on 14 th March 2017 following some collaborative conversations with both the UCD Students' Union and representatives of the NWCI. This was an evidenced based proposal which asked that the University commit to ESHTE and put in place structures for enhancing support, consolidating disclosure and information platforms and engage with the academic community to bring focussed research to the implementation and delivery phases of any associated initiatives.

In the intervening time period, UCD has put in place a UCD ESHTE group consisting of staff, faculty and students, which has led to a coordinated approach to the consideration of sexual assault and harassment. In particular, every undergraduate student of the University now engages with the 'Cup of Tea' consent video during their programme orientation in the week before the commencement of the academic year. This is through the sabbatical officers of the UCD Students' Union, with the support of the UCD ESHTE group and colleagues across the institution. In addition, the UCD ESHTE group has brought five initiatives to the University that are expected to have wide and/or deep impact on fostering a culture of responsibility, support and is clear in its condemnation of unwanted and unacceptable behaviours.

It Stops Now Campaign

UCD hosted the filming of the national It Stops Now video, including the use of our facilities for the positioning of a large mural. The team also created a large portable billboard which was moved around the campus to ensure high visibility.

Consent Workshops

UCD ESHTE group identified collectively a number of consent workshop initiatives that dovetail with the other ESHTE initiatives through the academic calendar. For example, the first workshop in the most recent academic year took place in association with UCD Consent and the LGBTQ+ Society, and was run by Consent Matters. We have also since hosted NUIG Smart Consent.

Bystander Programme Evaluation

UCD has investigated the benefits of bystander training and approved a programme that was completed as a pilot in the last academic year. This was greatly assisted by the generosity of UCC and Dr Louise Crowley, as the content is inspired by the work she has led in bystander training both at UCC, and at the National Advisory Committee of ESHTE. Notwithstanding this assistance, a significant amount of additional work has taken place to build a bespoke programme for UCD, led by Dr Aideen Quilty. A subgroup of UMT reviewed the findings of the pilot and approved the expansion of the bystander programme to all incoming students in the coming academic year, albeit adjusted to take into account COVID.

UCD Report and Support tool

UCD is keenly aware that incidents of sexual violence and harassment are under-reported. While the University has a formal complaint process, up until recently, there was no mechanism for those experiencing such incidents to notify the University anonymously.

An anonymous Report and Support tool was developed in the first trimester of the last academic year and was launched to employees and students in January/February 2020. At the formal launch in February, UCD welcomed the CEO of the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre who has supported the development of such tools. The launch also heard from UCD Student Welfare Officer, the UCD Dean of Students, Bystander Education Programme lead, the Registrar and the Vice-President for EDI.

The objectives of the establishment of the tool were to:

enable the University to direct those reporting incidents to appropriate support services

raise awareness as to the range of informal options for resolution, if appropriate, and the formal complaint procedure

monitor and report on the number and categories of incidents bullying, harassment and sexual harassment to help the University better understand its culture in relation to dignity and respect issues

raise the profile of the issues faced by all members of the University community

pilot on behalf of other Irish institutions a tool that has only been previously established in different legal jurisdictions.

Aligned to a culture of zero tolerance to issues of sexual violence, the data arising from the anonymous reporting tool will be used at College and University level to help raise awareness and promote the development of local initiatives. Also, as UCD is the first Irish University to develop such a tool, we are working with other groups nationally to share best practice and support the wider ambition to develop equivalent versions across the Higher Education Sector. The initiative has been in part supported by funding from the HEA.

Training of key employees and students in sexual assault disclosure

This has been enabled over the last three years through the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre. Training has also been tailored for the third level environment. Those identified for training include but are not limited to student advisers, students' union officers, estate services, dignity and respect contact persons and senior residential assistants. In addition, our counselling team are also trained to support students facing such trauma.

Policy on Sexual Harassment and Sexual Misconduct

UCD revised its Dignity and Respect policy in December 2017 which set out the supports available for employees and students experiencing issues of bullying, harassment and sexual harassment and also streamlined the process for making a formal complaint. The University is now developing a Sexual Harassment and Sexual Misconduct policy in response to developments at national level and following feedback from stakeholders in UCD. Following the development of this policy, an ongoing awareness raising campaign will take place to promote the policy as well as specific training for key supports that are in place to support people experiencing issues of this nature.

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Equality, Diversity and Inclusion | Ending Sexual Violence

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UCD is committed to the promotion of a culture, for work and study, which upholds the dignity and respect of the individual and which supports their right to study and/or work in an environment which is free from all forms of discrimination.

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Was unaware that a resource as such existed.

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All members of the University Community have the right to study or work in an environment free from bullying, harassment and sexual harassment. Students, staff and visitors to UCD can report anonymously through the UCD Report and Support tool. You can also check out supports and learn about other options available, including making a formal complaint.

If there is an emergency or you require out of hours assistance please call Unicare on 01 716 7999.

You can choose to make an anonymous report or find out more about your other options.

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All members of the University Community have the right to study or work in an environment free from bullying, harassment and sexual harassment. Students, staff and visitors to UCD can report anonymously through the UCD Report and Support tool. You can also check out supports and learn about other options available, including making a formal complaint.

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Almost 1 in 3 Women Report Being Raped During College Years, National Survey Reveals

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Almost 1 in 3 Women Report Being Raped During College Years, National Survey Reveals

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A national survey of college students in Ireland found that 29% of female, 28% of non-binary, and 10% of male students stated that they had experienced "non-consensual penetration by incapacitation, force, or threat of force" while attending college.

Run by NUI Galway's Active Consent Programme in conjunction with the Union of Students in Ireland, 'The Sexual Experiences Survey' was completed by 6,026 students between February and April. The survey aimed to document the experiences of sexual violence, sexual harassment and sexist harassment faced by Irish college students in higher education. The report hopes to inform the implementation of the 'Consent Framework' being drawn up by the Department of Education and skills.

According to the report, half of all men who had experienced nonconsensual penetration had never told anyone before taking part in the survey, along with 37% of women and 33% of non-binary students. When asked why they did not disclose the incident previously, half of all female respondents and a third of all male and non-binary respondents stated they felt that it was "not serious enough".

More than half of all first-year respondents said that they had experienced some form of sexual hostility in college. Sexist hostility was the most common form of harassment experienced by students.

USI Vice-President for Welfare, Róisín O'Donovan said: "In the survey just over 70 per cent of respondents who experienced sexual misconduct said they don't understand what happens when a student reports an incident to their college, while only 16 per cent, again who had an experience, said they had received information on where to get help from their institution and only just under 10 per cent said they knew how to report an incident. These are areas that can be addressed very quickly by Higher Institutions and that needs to be one of the on-campus actions taken as a result of these survey findings."

One of the report's co-authors, Dr Pádraig MacNeela of NUI Galway said- "The SES survey findings provide a stark depiction of the experiences that many students have had. Over 1,000 of the female students who took part in the survey described incidents that correspond to rape, while one-quarter of male students said they had been subject to sexual misconduct during their time in college. Bisexual, non-binary, and queer students described particularly high levels of sexual harassment."

MacNeela continued- "The survey findings also reveal positives about our campus climate. Most students took part in events, workshops, or other initiatives designed to prevent sexual misconduct. Those who took part were a lot more likely to be aware of supports and services."

In recent months, University College Dublin (UCD) has introduced a number of measures to help deal with the issues highlighted by the survey. UCD formally introduced an anonymous "Report + Support" reporting tool for the college's students in March. With the tool, any member of the UCD community can report all forms of bullying, harassment and sexual harassment. Report + Support is available now at reportandsupport.ucd.ie.
The college announced that all incoming freshers for the 2020-21 academic year would be required to attend a 90-minute class on preventing sexual assault.

Trinity College Dublin was one of nine colleges which signed up to a project which pledged €80,000 of funding to create an anonymous reporting tool for students facing sexual assault and harassment.
For anyone affected by anything in this article, the following centres and organisations are available for support: Dublin Rape Crisis Center - 1800 77 8888 / https://www.drcc.ie/ The UCD Student Union - UCD 24/7 Emergency Line: 01 716 7999 Pieta House - / Hugh Dooley - Deputy News Editor

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Almost 1 in 3 Women Report Being Raped During College Years, National Survey Reveals

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A national survey of college students in Ireland found that 29% of female, 28% of non-binary, and 10% of male students stated that they had experienced "non-consensual penetration by incapacitation, force, or threat of force" while attending college.Run by NUI Galway's Active Consent Programme in

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Colleges did not investigate majority of sexual assault and harassment cases reported by students in 2018/19

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Colleges did not investigate majority of sexual assault and harassment cases reported by students in 2018/19

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Colleges did not investigate majority of sexual assault and harassment cases reported by students in 2018/19

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Minister Simon Harris says colleges have until February to publish their action plans on tackling sexual violence and harassment.

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When reflecting on sexual harassment/violence at third-level I was reminded how this is also an issue for secondary schools. This news story, based in a school in Cork, involved the revelation of a list in the boys bathroom which said “the girls with the most number of ticks will get raped”. When I remembered this story it reminded me how young attitudes towards girls form. And it made me realize that my groups chosen training programme should be implemented before third level.

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Cork school investigating list that said 'the girls with the most number of ticks will get raped'

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The list took the form of graffiti on a bathroom door.

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This article by Donal O’Keeffe demonstrates the common use of rape jokes. Moreover, the scenario demonstrates why men often remain quiet and do not challenges their friends on their inappropriate behaviour.

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"I should have told my friend his 'rape joke' was inappropriate. Why didn't I?"

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Men need to start feeling more than a little uncomfortable about the issue of consent, writes Donal O'Keeffe.

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There is a Sexual Violence Epidemic on Campuses. Students Need to Force the Government to Act

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There is a Sexual Violence Epidemic on Campuses. Students Need to Force the Government to Act

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An extensive survey of third level students has revealed that almost one-third of women experienced "non-consensual penetration during their time in college". The figure is 28 per cent for non-binary students and 10 per cent for males.

Two-thirds of students had been sexually harassed by third year of college. Shockingly, disabled students were even more likely to suffer sexual misconduct.

These and many more stark figures emerge from the biggest ever sexual experiences survey of over 6,000 students in Ireland, devised by NUI Galway's Active* Consent Programme in partnership with USI.

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The outgoing government promised - but didn't deliver - a framework for dealing with this issue in higher education. College provides a particular opportunity and breeding ground for sexual harassment and assault, but the problem, of course, is widespread in society.

The issue of consent has raged for a number of years as a global youth and feminist revolt has challenged sexism, misogyny, homophobia and inequality. We've had the global phenomenon of Me Too. And in Ireland, marches following the Belfast rugby rape trial, victim-blaming in courts leading to 'This Is Not Consent' protests and walkouts by Google workers in Ireland and worldwide against sexual harassment.

Penetration without consent is actually rape. Let the fact sink in that almost one-third of female students are raped in college in Ireland. Surely this merits the declaration of an emergency?

The issue of consent has raged for a number of years as a global youth and feminist revolt has challenged sexism, misogyny, homophobia and inequality

Last year, then Taoiseach Leo Varadkar stated there was an "epidemic of sexual violence in Ireland". If only then the government treated it as seriously as the current coronavirus epidemic.

The comparison may seem forced but the toll on society from gender violence is immense. Students who suffered sexual assault or harassment were more likely to experience anxiety, depression, with higher rates of non-attendance and withdrawal from studies.

Sexual and intimate partner violence debilitate victims, damage their health, their ability to work and of course their children.

My own community of Blanchardstown is reeling after the brutal murder of Jean Eagers in her home. She was a mother, a retail worker, a soon-to-be grandmother.

By coincidence, last October I held a meeting metres from Jean's home in Hartstown to mark International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women. The CEO of Sonas told that meeting up to 500 women a year can't be accommodated in the local Blanchardstown refuge. Due to lack of funds, they can't expand their outreach services that assist women to escape controlling, abusive relationships.

Rape crisis services are similarly starved of funding. Waiting lists for counselling are the norm.

What an indictment that the cruel greyhound industry gets more state funding than the entire sexual violence sector.

One of the findings of the campus surveys was the more interaction students had with information or workshops on consent workshops, the more likely they were to know how to deal with sexual misconduct and where to seek help.

Rape crisis services are similarly starved of funding. Waiting lists for counselling are the norm

Just imagine the transformative impact in society if preventative education on sexual and gender violence was not only the norm in every college but every school, workplace and community centre. Everything in capitalist patriarchal society reinforces gender inequality and popular culture grooms girls and women in particular to tolerate a level of toxic and abusive male behaviour.

But far from educating, the outgoing government consciously blocked the passage of the Objective Sex Education Bill (moved by myself and Solidarity in 2018), despite enthusiastic support from a range of youth, student, women and LGBTQ+ organisations.

The conservative composition of the new government means there is no room for complacency that reform will automatically happen. The religious and far-right are making sex education their next battleground. Teaching sex education that focuses on consent and embraces LGBTQ+ relationships will be a challenge to the religious patronage of schools. And we all know Fianna Fáil and Fine Gael have no desire to separate church and state and have never willingly taken on the Catholic Church.

Change and social progress have always come from movements pressuring the establishment. We saw that recently in Ireland with the historic victories on marriage equality and repeal. It was the struggle of young people, women, the LGBTQ+ community and working-class people who put those changes on the agenda and carried them through. Students obviously played a key role.

It will be vital that students' unions campaign for the promised programme for tackling sexual harassment and violence and the funding to make it a reality. But it can't be confined to routine meetings and accepting promises from the new education ministers. This is now such an urgent issue throughout society that students could lead the way for everyone in demanding the type of funding, resources and education necessary to try to tackle it.

International Women's Day on March 8th is a day that's become synonymous with huge women's strikes worldwide. The Union of Students in Ireland should consider initiating a coalition of organisations of youth, women and trade unions in the autumn, to launch a campaign for action on gender violence, building to a major national demonstration on gender violence on March 8th.

Ruth Coppinger is a former Solidarity-People Before Profit politician who served as a TD for Dublin West from 2014 to 2020.

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There is a Sexual Violence Epidemic on Campuses. Students Need to Force the Government to Act

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An extensive survey of third level students has revealed that almost one-third of women experienced "non-consensual penetration during their time in college". The figure is 28 per cent for non-binary students and 10 per cent for males. Two-thirds of students had been sexually harassed by third year of college.

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Cultural change needed to make campuses safer for third-level students

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Cultural change needed to make campuses safer for third-level students

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This news article from the Irish Times conveyed to me how the issue of rape and sexual assault is very much 'hidden'. Students failing to report to services that they are victims of sexual assault continues to protect the perpetrator and creates an environment where they are silenced.

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Rape and sexual assault at third level is usually hidden.

But last autumn, it tumbled out into the open when the Cork Sexual Violence Centre said it had been made aware of three rapes of first-year college students at the start of the academic year.

Mary Crilly, the centre's director, said all the victims were young women, aged 18 or 19, who were embarking on what should have been an exciting time of their lives.

"None of them had reported the assaults to gardaí. They felt they should have been able to do something to stop it . . . They also felt that because it was someone they knew, they had put blame on themselves," she told The Irish Times.

Far from being very isolated incidents, most research suggests rape and sexual assault involving students - especially first-years - is a feature across third-level campuses.

A 2013 Union of Students in Ireland (USI) report Say Something, based on a survey of more than 2,700 students, found 16 per cent of respondents had experienced "unwanted sexual contact".

Some 5 per cent of women said they had been raped, and a further 3 per cent that they had been the victims of attempted rape.

Harassment

Against this backdrop, Minister of State for higher education Mary Mitchell O'Connor has commissioned a working group report on how to tackle sexual harassment and violence at third level.

The report, to be published shortly, outlines a series of steps which third-level colleges should be required to take to help create "safer and more respectful campuses".

Among its proposals are that third-level colleges should be required to record and report incidents of sexual harassment, assault and rape on campuses, rather than leaving these issues to gardaí.

Significantly, it says each college should report annually on progress in implementing these steps as part of their "compacts", or performance agreements, with the Higher Education Authority.

Under these agreements, the authority can withhold or deduct funding for underperformance.

Students should also be exposed to workshops and classes to boost awareness and understanding around active consent and sexual violence.

Overall, the aim is to create cultural change to create "safer and more respectful campuses".

Unwanted advances

Student counsellors say it is difficult to say with any authority whether incidents are on the increase - as there are no definitive figures - or whether there is simply greater awareness.

Many, however, detect a change among a generation that is eager to set clear boundaries and call out unwanted sexual advances.

One of the first colleges to introduce classes on consent was NUI Galway.

Since 2015, more than 2,000 third-level students have taken part on a voluntary basis in its "smart consent consent workshops".

Dr Pádraig MacNeela, a senior lecturer at NUI Galway, says its surveys show students who participated feel better informed about consent and are more likely to feel they have the skills they need.

Different versions of consent classes have since spread to other universities such as Trinity College Dublin, University of Limerick and University College Cork.

The idea of consent classes, however, has not always been been fully embraced.

When Trinity introduced sexual consent classes for first-year students living on campus a few years ago, critics labelled it as "neo-puritan preaching" that would treat all young men as potential sex offenders. UCD's first attempt to provide consent workshops were cancelled because attendance was so low.

Many other colleges and institutes of technology do not have have such classes or, if they do, they tend to be ad hoc and small-scale.

Frustration

One frustration among campaigners on these issues is that most of these initiatives have been driven by students' unions rather than college authorities.

USI president Siona Cahill has pointed out that too often these issues are not recognised at the upper echelons of institutions.

"For example, no university has a specific policy for dealing with sexual assaults on campus. Instead, it's dealt with under the wider 'dignity and respect' policies, which are more appropriate for bullying," she said last year. "So, if a student is the victim of a rape or assault, it's dealt with by the gardaí. Yet that same victim may be sitting in the same class as the perpetrator."

The new report, however, says senior management will need to take a lead on ensuring students have access to consent classes and that structure are set up to report and investigate sexual harassment.

The next question which campaigners will be want to know is whether these well-meaning proposals will be implemented? Or will they gather dust on a shelf?

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Cultural change needed to make campuses safer for third-level students

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Rape and sexual assault at third level is usually hidden. But last autumn, it tumbled out into the open when the Cork Sexual Violence Centre said it had been made aware of three rapes of first-year college students at the start of the academic year.

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The murder of Sarah Everard highlighted the fears and concerns faced by women on a daily basis. The murder also highlighted the use of victim blaming once again.

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"Police told women not to go out at night this week. Women are not the problem."

Sarah Everard disappeared on March 3rd. After leaving her friend's flat in Clapham, London, she began her journey back to her home in Brixton. The expectation that she would get home before 10pm turned to concern when she never arrived.

Sarah's friends reported her missing, telling police that it was out of character for her not to contact anybody. Following some days of searching, police announced that they had arrested a man - a serving police officer - in connection with Sarah's disappearance. He was later re-arrested on suspicion of murder.

This week, social media has been awash with grief, frustration, fear, and anger. Since the news of the policeman's arrested following Sarah's disappearance, women living near the Clapham area have reported feeling unsafe and scared.

But they have also reported feeling tired - of being sexually assaulted, sexually harassed, attacked, and killed. Of being told to never walk home alone at night, when women are still being attacked during the day. Of being urged to stay inside after dark, when women are not the ones doing the attacking.

Those who watched Netflix's recent true crime docu-series about the Yorkshire Ripper will be familiar with the UK's first campaign to Reclaim the Night.

Amidst Peter Sutcliffe's reign of terror in which he killed at least 13 women, protesters took to the streets to demand that the rhetoric around women's safety be changed.

Carrying placards reading 'It could be the man next door,' Yorkshire's young female population did their utmost to reclaim the night and instead, place blame on the man who was doing the killing, not the women who were just living their lives.

Their campaign came after local police enforced a curfew on women, telling them to stay indoors at night, never walk home alone, and ensure they travelled with male friends for protection.

In the early 80s, the police thought they were doing women a favour. They warned them of the dangers, and left it up to them to protect themselves. If you went out at night and got murdered, it was your own fault. You were told not to, after all.

40 years on and while a lot of the attitudes around crimes against women have shifted, echoes of the conversation have a tendency to remain the same. She was abused in her home. Why didn't she leave? She was assaulted on a night out. Why didn't she fight? She was murdered on her way home from a friend's house. Why was she out walking that late?

Sarah Everard did everything she was told to do. She stayed on a main road. She went home before midnight. She called her boyfriend to let him know she was leaving.

At the time of writing, the remains discovered in the Kent woodland have yet to be identified. Following reports that the discovery was made, a vigil was organised in Sarah's honour - but also in honour of the thousands of other women who fear walking alone at night, and those who never made it home.

"It's wrong that the response to violence against women requires women to behave differently," said organisers. "In Clapham, police told women not to go out at night this week. Women are not the problem.

"This is a vigil for Sarah, but also for all women who feel unsafe, who go missing from our streets and who face violence every day."

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Sarah Everard: She was just walking home | Her.ie

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Sarah Everard disappeared on March 3rd. After leaving her friend's flat in Clapham, London, she began her journey back to her home in Brixton. The expectation that she would get home before 10pm turned to concern when she never arrived. Sarah's friends reported her missing, telling police that it was out of character for her not to contact anybody.

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The movie The Magdalene Sisters demonstrates the treatment of women in an Irish context.
The role of the church and the use of 'shame' and 'guilt' to make women feel less than.

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The term asking for it is a narrative which is often used to victim blame individuals who have been a victim of sexual assault/violence. In turn, Louise O'Neill's book focuses on the reception to sexual violence/assault in a modern Irish context.

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Emma O'Donovan is eighteen, beautiful, and fearless. It's the beginning of summer in a quiet Irish town and tonight she and her friends have dressed to impress. Everyone is at the party, and all eyes are on Emma.
The next morning Emma's parents discover her collapsed on the doorstop of their home, unconscious. She is disheveled, bleeding, and disoriented, looking as if she had been dumped there.
To her distress, Emma can't remember what happened the night before. All she knows is that none of her friends will respond to her texts. At school, people turn away from her and whisper under their breath. Her mind may be a blank as far as the events of the previous evening, but someone has posted photos of it on Facebook under a fake account, "Easy Emma"--photos she will never be able to forget.
As the photos go viral and a criminal investigation is launched, the community is thrown into tumult. The media descends, neighbors chose sides, and people from all over the world want to talk about her story. Everyone has something to say about Emma.
Asking For It is a powerful story about the devastating effects of rape and public shaming, told through the awful experience of a young woman whose life is changed forever by an act of violence.

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Emma O'Donovan is eighteen, beautiful, and fearless. It's the beginning of summer in a quiet Irish town and tonight she and her friends have dressed to impress. Everyone is at the party, and all eyes are on Emma. The next morning Emma's parents discover her collapsed on the doorstop of their home, unconscious.

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The below advertisement campaign by the Department of Justice showcases the 'excuses' which are a commonly reproduced in relation to sexual assault in an Irish context. The advertisement demonstrates how different genders can be victims of sexual assault. The settings of social outings, football training, and the workplace further emphasizes how sexual assault/violence can occur in any environment.

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Whenever I see this ad on the television I feel a sense of uneasiness. It reminds me of being in uncomfortable encounters and not having someone to support or protect you. Moreover, I feel like it successfully demonstrates how male behaviour is often excused and how this contributes to inappropriate actions not being called out.

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'No Excuses' Sexual Violence Awareness Campaign 2020

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Whilst studying decolonizing solidarity the importance of storytelling raised in Boudreau Morris's article reminded me of the significance of story telling in the Irish culture which spreads amongst the Irish diaspora. In particular the line, 'There were uncles giving lectures on ancient Irish history'., from The Pogues song The Body of an American made me think of the Irish community in the U.S. and how familial ties to Ireland is strengthened through story telling.

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The Pogues - The Body of an American Lyrics

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Irish Navy Documentary - EU Migrant Crisis

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Irish Navy Documentary - EU Migrant Crisis

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During Exercise 7, on hospitality,   a documentary which I had to watch for the module 'EU in the World', came to my mind when discussing about control in the relationship between the host and the guest.  The RTÉ 2016 documentary revealed a number of incidents where the panic of refugees on the make-shrift rafts, provided by human traffickers, collapsed when the people on board began grabbing for life jackets and pushing one another. In turn, when the Navy were not in control of the situation, people sadly drowned.

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Hospitality - 'It does not say RSVP on the Statue of Liberty' 

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Hospitality - 'It does not say RSVP on the Statue of Liberty' 

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Whilst studying the topic of hospitality the following scene from the movie Clueless came into my mind. During the scene Cher compares her father's 50th birthday party and guests who did not RSVP to the Haitians seeking refugee in America. In turn, addressing the fears of the strain refugees would have on the countries resources Cher concludes that 'if the government could just get to the kitchen and rearrange a few things we can certainly party with the Haitians'. Although it is clear that a party is not the equivalent of a refugee movement, the message shows how hospitality requires adaption to unexpected circumstances.

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Clueless | "whatever" (RSVP Speech ) clip

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When learning about industrial schools in Canada which were used to strip children of their Native American culture and practices I was reminded of this paper I read during my first year in college in the module 'Irish Childhoods'. The school curriculum following the War of Independence saw a shift to the importance of the revival of the Irish language by classes thought through Irish. However, with a large majority of the parents of the children not speaking the language and speaking English in the home environment it ultimately failed. However, it showed me how Éamon de Valera's aim was to reintroduce the Irish language following Britain's colonization of the country.

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Constructions of Childhood in Ireland in the Twentieth Century A View from the Primary School Curriculum 1900 1999

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When discussing the importance of the land on which we stand in Exercise 9, Re/Groundings, I thought of the following scene from the movie 'The Field' (1990). The fear of the outsider and the significance of land in an Irish context is highlighted.

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The Field - Outsiders (Excellent quality)

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Solidarities Power Differences - Mary's Story Personalised

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Exercise 8 - GM2's Performance of GM1's Story

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Exercise 8 - GM2's Performance of GM1's Story

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Solidarities Power Differences - Final Overall Reflection Piece - Student Number - 18394011

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Solidarities Power Differences - Exercise 6 Reflective Piece - Student Number - 18394011

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Solidarities Power Differences - Exercise 5 Reflective Piece - Student Number - 18394011

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Solidarities Power Differences - Exercise 4 Reflective Piece - Student Number - 18394011

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Solidarities Power Differences - Exercise 3 Reflective Piece - Student Number - 18394011

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Solidarities Power Differences - Exercise 2 Reflective Piece - Student Number - 18394011

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Solidarities Power Diffferences - Exercise 1 Reflective Piece - Student Number - 18394011

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'Now imagine she's white'
The need to humanize the black girl’s experience was to imagine it happening to a girl that was white. Came to mind when listening to Sandhana Bery's talk on 'White Empathy'.

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Best Closing statement ever  (A Time to kill 1996)

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'Don't forget that you are white'
Reminds me of that reinforcing whites vs. blacks dynamic. How white people collectively place themselves ahead of black people, concreting black peoples' marginalized position in society, particularly in America.

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Conceptualized what I imagined to be a 'black neighbourhood'

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Alice Goffman Credit... Ricardo Barros

"On the Run" is, first and foremost, a remarkable feat of reporting. Its author, Alice Goffman, a young sociologist, had an ethnography assignment for an undergraduate class at the University of Pennsylvania, and she, the daughter of the renowned sociologist Erving Goffman (1922-82), didn't take it lightly. She hung out with an older African-American food service worker at the university, and one thing led to another. Before long, she had moved into an apartment in a poor, largely black neighborhood in Philadelphia, her housemate a young man whose family lived down the block. Goffman became such a part of the fabric of the community that she was harassed by the police, witnessed someone getting pistol-whipped, was even set up on a blind date. And all the while she was furiously taking notes, trying to make sense of what at first glance appeared to be utter chaos going on around her.

But where others might see bedlam, Goffman finds patterns, even logic. When it becomes clear that many of the young men won't go to the public hospital for treatment - she recounts watching one of them prone on his kitchen table, having a bullet removed from his thigh by a neighbor who is a nurse's aide - Goffman begins to ask questions and learns that the police often loiter near the emergency room, scanning the visitors list, looking to arrest anyone who might have an outstanding warrant. This could be a metaphor for what Goffman comes to realize: The young men in this community feel hunted. Their mental energy is spent trying to elude the police, so much so that they impart words of advice to younger siblings, including this from a man Goffman calls Chuck, speaking to his 12-year-old brother: "You hear them coming, that's it, you gone. Period. 'Cause whoever they looking for, even if it's not you, nine times out of 10 they'll probably book you." Chuck's warnings, it becomes clear, have merit. In fact, Chuck's brother receives three years' probation when he's given a ride to school in what turns out to be a stolen car. Many of the men Goffman encounters have recently been released from prison and are on parole. And as she points out, our parole and probation system is set up for people to fail. She introduces us to Alex, whose parole stipulations forbid him to visit his old neighborhood or be out past curfew. It's as if the system is just waiting for his first misstep, ready to pounce.

"On the Run" serves as a kind of coda to our war on drugs, an effort whose very rhetoric suggested it was us against them. The criminal justice system became a kind of invading force, aimed mostly at young black men. There was, of course, the inexplicable sentencing disparity between those caught with powdered cocaine and those caught with crack cocaine. States were emboldened to be equally punitive.In Illinois, for instance, the Legislature passed a law that automatically transferred a juvenile to adult court if caught with drugs within 1,000 feet of a public housing complex - a law clearly directed at African-American teenagers. The war on drugs mangled, if not destroyed, any trust between residents of distressed urban communities and the authorities. And when we speak of the authorities, it's the police who on a day-to-day basis must contend with the rubble left behind from more than two decades of disturbingly misguided public policy. Goffman describes how "a climate of fear and suspicion pervades everyday life," with the result that "a new social fabric is emerging under the threat of confinement: one woven in suspicion, distrust and the paranoiac practices of secrecy, evasion and unpredictability." To her credit, she didn't set out with this notion; rather, it's where she landed after six years of up-close observation.

Goffman spent her time in a Philadelphia community she calls 6th Street, which consists of a commercial strip and five residential blocks. There she came to know the locals intimately, not only the young men but also their girlfriends and families. She became so embedded in the community that she witnessed 24 police raids, including one in which she herself was handcuffed. Her guide is a man in his 20s she calls Mike (Goffman changed everyone's name), who introduces her to friends as his adopted sister. Mike has a low-paying warehouse job and supplements his income by selling crack, getting in and out of trouble with the law. Like the others we meet, he's neither hero nor villain. He's simply trying to get by.

The level of detail in this book and Goffman's ability to understand her subjects' motivations are astonishing - and riveting. Indeed, it's a power of "On the Run" that her insights and conclusions feel so honest to what she's seen and heard. She depicts a community where trust has evaporated, where young men like Mike often avoid girlfriends for fear that the women, for their own reasons, might turn their paramours in. And she describes an underground economy that has sprung up around what she calls the fugitive life, including entrepreneurs who sell their clean urine to those on parole. (One entrepreneur jokes that his trade encourages him to stay clean: "If you sell one dirty bag, you're done.") More than anything, Goffman helps us understand why residents of this neighborhood make the seemingly cockeyed choices they do, often for very rational reasons, often because they know well the repercussions of the alternative. She learns that many refuse to call the police not because of a cultural aversion to "snitching," but because they fear it will only expose them, especially if they're on parole or have an outstanding warrant. You can't read this book without a growing sense of understanding as well as outrage.

Still, Goffman is an ethnographer, not a storyteller, and it's challenging to keep track of the large cast of characters. I often wished that she had given us more to hold on to, that she had let us get to know some of her subjects in all their fullness and richness. Because she's so focused on their relationship to the law, we don't learn much else about them. Their interests. Their aspirations. Even just their quirks and idiosyncrasies. They undoubtedly have more dimensions than Goffman allows them in these pages.

There's been a good deal of buzz about this book, in large part because of the reporting techniques, a kind of über-version of immersion journalism. And it's these techniques that make "On the Run" both exciting and troublesome. In a 50-page appendix titled "A Methodological Note" that is as compelling as the body of the book, Goffman lays out her reporting approach. It will leave many shaking their heads, both with admiration and uneasiness. As I mentioned, Goffman ended up living in the community, and her housemate, Mike, and his two friends who regularly crash at the house are the book's main characters. Goffman becomes so much a part of their lives that she starts to be a participant as well as an observer. She talks about cutting herself off from her previous friends, of restricting herself to only the media Mike's group indulged in, which was mostly hip-hop, R&B and gangster movies. "After spending a few months with Mike and his friends," she writes, "I moved even further away from their ideals of beauty or femininity, in part as a strategy to conduct the fieldwork, and in part because I was, as a participant observer, adopting their male attitudes, dress, habits and even language." This made me squirm. Something feels calculating here. I've spent a good deal of time in similar communities (though unlike Goffman, I've never moved in), and I've always felt it was best to be myself, to acknowledge the differences. I have to admit I write this criticism with both awe and discomfort. Could she have had this same access if she remained true to who she is? Goffman may disagree, but I think she could have.

There's something more disquieting, though. Goffman at times makes rather sweeping statements or offers up the occasional anecdote, mostly relating to law enforcement, without an indication of the source. At one point, she asserts that "the police typically take whatever cash they find" during drug raids. On another occasion, she writes of an F.B.I. agent who, in an effort to track people with warrants, supposedly developed a computer program inspired by the Stasi, the East German secret police. Nowhere does she tell us where she got such information. But what I suspect will be most debated, especially among ethnographers and journalists, are ethical questions raised by Goffman's status as a participant observer. She witnesses a number of beatings and, by my count, two murders, one at the hands of a young man she was following, the other at the hands of a police officer. In a recent interview with Philly.com, Goffman mentions that she destroyed all her field notes so that they couldn't be subpoenaed. That seems to answer a practical question, but not the moral one. I should be the last to pass judgment, given incidents I've seen and heard. I'll also concede that I've never witnessed something as profoundly disturbing as a murder, and if I did, I suppose under certain circumstances, especially if I feared for my or my family's safety, I might be torn about coming forward. But I wish Goffman addressed this dilemma head-on, especially because enduring such regular acts of brutality undoubtedly weighs on the souls of those like Mike and his friends.

Ultimately, what Goffman experienced living alongside these men is both revelatory and sobering. The question we now need to ask is clear: How do we emerge from the wreckage left by a public policy that posited young black men as the enemy? As a guard at a halfway house tells Goffman: "It's a tragedy. It's a crime against God. Sometimes I think, in 50 years we are going to look back on this and, you know. . . . This was wrong."

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Deep Cover: Alice Goffman's 'On the Run' (Published 2014)

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"On the Run" is, first and foremost, a remarkable feat of reporting. Its author, Alice Goffman, a young sociologist, had an ethnography assignment for an undergraduate class at the University of Pennsylvania, and she, the daughter of the renowned sociologist Erving Goffman (1922-82), didn't take it lightly.

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Last semester for my module on 'Race, Ethnicity and Migration' we were recommended to watch this documentary about the migrant crisis in Europe. When I was doing exercise 3, images and commentary from this documentary rang in my head.

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In the wake of the Arab Spring and long before the current refugee crisis, the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa saw the arrival of over 40,000 migrants from Tunisia and Libya, all seeking refuge or a better life in Europe. Situated just 70 miles from the north African coast, the island soon becomes the front line of Europe's immigration crisis - its small migrant reception centre overflows, the island's tourist economy faces meltdown and locals openly revolt, blockading the small port and riot in the streets.

The islanders are as divided as Europe on to how to respond to the crisis. But local lawyer Paola La Rosa comes to see the bigger picture. "Europe and the USA got really enthusiastic about the freedom movements in North Africa," she says. "They didn't understand that these peoples had a revolution in order to be free, and fundamental this freedom is the freedom to move. The West would like them to be free, but at home...".
Nominated for Best Documentary, One World Media awards Watch the full film below.

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The Invasion of Lampedusa - Olly Lambert

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In the wake of the Arab Spring and long before the current refugee crisis, the tiny Italian island of Lampedusa saw the arrival of over 40,000 migrants from Tunisia and Libya, all seeking refuge or a better life in Europe.

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Following our time to reflect I listed the causes which came to my mind for exercise 3.

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During my second year in college I was shown the Ted Talk of 'The Danger of a Single Story' by

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie. This reminded me that nobody's experience is the same; and this is crucial for solidarity.

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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie: The danger of a single story | TED

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While I was reflecting during class before Exercise 3, the issue of people being effected by drugs and crime came to my mind which ultimately made me think of the Veronica Guerin movie.

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Manic Street Preachers - If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next

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Manic Street Preachers - If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next

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The chorus of this song by Manic Street Preachers, although inspired by the Spanish Civil War, came to mind when thinking if people did not partake in solidarity and injustices are not overcome the cycle will continue again and again from generation to generation.
'And if you tolerate this
Then your children will be next
And if you tolerate this
Then your children will be next
Will be next
Will be next
Will be next'.

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Manic Street Preachers - If You Tolerate This Your Children Will Be Next (Official Video)

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Dylan's 'Masters of War' reminded me how the actions of the minority (people in positions of decision making) directly impact the lives of the majority. It is the vulnerable who suffer the most whilst the elite call the shots.

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Bob Dylan - Masters of War (Official Audio)

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This song came to my mind when I thought of individuals from low socio-economic backgrounds. Lacking the opportunities to excel in life they become stuck in the 'rat trap' and monotony of life.
The lyrics  'Deep down in her pockets she finds 50p
Hey is that any way for a young girl to be?
I'm gonna get out of school work in some factory
Work all the hours God gave me get myself a little easy money
Now, now, now na na' made me think of getting a job purely to get by in life.

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A song which came to my mind when thinking of the injustices in the world and my privileges. 'Nothing Rhymed' - meaning nothing makes sense.

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Gilbert O'Sullivan - Nothing Rhymed (Official HD Video)

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Added to the base of my self portrait the items which tell a story about me or represent a moment in my life.

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Portrait - Solidarities Power Differences