Lad Culture in FE SU’s Local January 2015

What is Lad Culture? Lad culture’ was defined by our participants in the That’s What She Said report as a group or ‘pack’ mentality residing in activities such as sport and heavy alcohol consumption, and ‘banter’ which was often sexist, misogynist and homophobic. 37% of women students have faced unwelcome sexual advances 60% of students heard rape jokes whilst on campus Read the definition, the quotes come from the report.

Overview of Lad Culture March 2013: That’s What She Said Report October 2013: Lad Culture Consultation February 2014: Lad Culture Summit March 2014: National Strategy Team April 2014: First meeting of the Team Next: Launch Lad Culture Audit Basically highlight that lots of work has been happening which has led to the creation of the National Strategy Team (which is mixed, not just women) The lad Culture Audit is currently being created….it will be a tool universities and HE SU’s can use to audit their current policies to tackle lad culture, identify good practice and places where more effort needs to happen.

Aim “We believe that tackling lad culture will create a happier, safer, more inclusive environment for all those within the education communities.”     This is the aim of the National Strategy group

Objectives: To support Students’ Unions and institutions to map what lad culture current responses look like in their environment To facilitate the development and implementation of resources to tackle lad culture To empower education communities to lead their own institutional changes   And the objectives

Lad Culture: Why different in FE? Lad culture is something that tends to happen in spaces that are directly associated with a culture that comes with being at university, such as attending your local SU/student bar, within groups of sports teams and generally in social areas particularly around alcohol. Further Education looks very different when it comes to these things so it’s important that separate work is done to break down a) if what we define as Lad Culture exists in FE spaces, b) if it does, what does it look like? And c) what can we put in place to tackle it in an FE environment? These workshops at SU’s local are the first steps in getting to grips with Lad Culture in FE and we want you to share your experiences and thoughts with us so we can start to shape the next steps of the project.

Your Thoughts Education Performance – does Lad Culture impact on the experiences of students in the classroom? Extra Curricular Activities Social and community spaces around college In the community and workplace – e.g public transport to and from college, on placement, in the workplace during apprenticeship This should last 20 minutes – about 4 minutes on each area and a little time to move round Divide the room into small groups of 4/5 and ask them to spend 15 minutes talking and making notes on flipchart paper around the areas on the slide. They should think about…. What examples of ‘lad culture’ have they seen? If it doesn’t define as lad culture by our definition, is it sexism? How was it tackled? Was it tackled? How did it make them feel? Were there any repercussions for those involved?

Feedback Each group will spend a couple of minutes feeding back their discussion, followed by a wider group discussion on your thoughts on Lad Culture in FE

Thank you For further information, please go to: www.nus.org.uk and/or Email: ladculture@nus.org.uk