Watched a BBC documentary on the Warwick University rape
"banter" case…. Reminded me that I dislike Warwick University. I knew someone many years ago who went there
who was bullied there. When I went for
the interview for Warwick I absolutely hated the place and the few times I’ve
visited I’ve disliked it too. It’s such
an ugly concrete blob. As a stand up
visiting such places in later life I’ve continued to dislike campus
Universities. Martin Coyote used to do a
gag “I’ve been doing a lot of University gigs recently – I feel like somebody’s
dad who’s been sent round to cheer everybody up". Where I went to University in Leeds there is
a campus but it’s very much in and still part of the town and so you don’t feel
the same sense of isolation. Listening
to the men ranking women in the order they would like to rape them I wondered
if the dystopian sense of isolation that the brutalist concrete architecture seems to me to represent
was a factor in any of this.
The female
student who bravely gave her testimony straight to camera in the dystopian setting of a completely empty student bar explaining how these
people had all been close personal friends of her’s and her friends…
...how they’d
been to each other’s houses at Christmas, been on holidays together and all of
that while at the same time the men had been ranking the women as potential
rape victims and fantasising about pinning them down….
...made me wonder if the
claustrophobia/agoraphobia these places engender in me is a factor in any of this... Only I never really hung out with the cream of University society but even I can’t remember having discussions with my mates about raping
women ...
....but that may be because the internet hadn't been invented and I didn’t have many friends. I spent most of my time hanging out with
older people who had left the University but still hung round the student union
as like a sort of social flotsam and jetsam. I’ve heard other people say they were
bullied at University and when I look at these campus Universities they
increasingly remind me of schools and it always seems that the people who say this went to one of these enclosed campus Universties - sorry "Unis". A
place to herd young people away where they won’t be bothering the grown-ups…
Everyone came over quite well except the rape centre lady
who complained that it was wrong of the University to call the complainant in
for an interview the day after the allegations were made yet simultaneously
complained about the University later taking two months to reach a
decision which seemed a bit moaning for the sake of it. However, she had a point that people going into these processes don't really know what they're letting themselves in for or how big it will get...
The University got in trouble
for cross-examining the victims and using a press officer to do the
investigation but all this would have faded away if – having separated the internet
bystanders from the actively involved – they hadn’t then done a U-turn and
reduced their suspensions from 10 years to 1 year.
What’s the point in a 1 year suspension
anyway? What happened to people getting “sent
down” like in P G Wodehouse novels…? Oddly
when it came to this issue the rape centre lady didn’t really make her points
very well… but I suppose she means well.
Can’t be a nice job…
Call me a graduate from the University of the Bleeding Obvious but it has to be said that there was indeed something very nasty about the whole thing. Even the bystanders amongst the Warwick
11 leave you with a feeling that all these people were “in on it” whether
actively engaged or not. Part of me
wondered were some of these men just using the word “rape” as an inflammatory substitute
for “fuck” but that didn't really fly as an excuse for what they did even to my inner Horace Rumpole… it was
like a kind of Lord of the Flies meets In Dubious Battle. Anyway … let us away from this depressing
subject…
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