Campaign Update and Upcoming Events for Students
Women’s Society (WomSoc) are a mostly-campaigning society open to all students, regardless of gender. We do a lot of work on feminist issues (feminism is for everybody!) but we also have non-political activities like our weekly knitting group, who meet every Monday in Blue Sky at 3:30pm.
However, this month, we have a very important new campaign that we think will make a big difference for the good of all students at Bangor. There will soon be a survey making the rounds on our own SU website regarding students’ experiences of verbal harassment while they are out on the streets of Bangor and its surrounding communities. You may even have experienced a form of harassment without realising it; but in a nutshell, street harassment is any unwanted comments or other ‘out loud’ behaviour such as shouting, whistling, honking, or lip smacking. It can have sexual, racial, disablist, or homophobic overtones, and it can have a really negative effect on how you feel about being out and about in town. What we at WomSoc would like to know is, how do Bangor students experience this kind of thing, and what can we do to help put a stop to it and make you more confident as you carry out your degree here in North Wales?
So with all this in mind, we’d like to ask you along to our big winter event, Reclaim the Night. It’s an annual march we host that is open to everyone that protests victim blaming and encourages marchers to reclaim their streets as safe spaces which are not intimidating. We used our march last year to raise awareness of the high levels of sexual assault and the intimidation of women students through abuse, harassment, and stalking; this year we’d like to open the floor to you, our student body, to share your experiences. We depart from Main Arts at 5:45 on December 7th, march through College Park and past Octagon, and rally at the town clock around a quarter past 6.
If you’d like to carry a placard or poster, please come along the day before to our placard making party at 4pm in the SU committee room. Materials will cost you £1 and we would like to recycle the wood for next year’s march (when we hope to provide the materials for free).
If you are more interested in what WomSoc actually do, please come to the FREE day-long event on Normal Site on December 7th, called Sister ACTivist. It is run by NUS Wales Women’s Campaign and is open to self-defining women students. That means if you live your life as a woman, or if you believe you are a woman, you are welcome to come along. To register all you have to do is email jo.caulfield@undeb.bangor.ac.uk, our SU President, and she will sort out the rest for you!
