Universities which are less ‘captured’ by gender ideology

[percypig]

Morning, this thread has been inspired by one about a survey in Leeds and by recent coverage of events at universities across the UK.

My eldest DC is starting to look at universities for 2024 and in my working life as a teacher I’m often talking to 6th formers about their Uni choices.

I’m wondering if anyone has experience of universities which are, as my title says, ‘less captured’ than others? Or conversely, others were being gender critical could make for a really unpleasant university experience.

Students and families weigh up all sorts of criteria from en-suites to job prospects, clubs and societies on offer to lab facilities. Given recent events I’d also like to know how open universities and their students are to gender critical beliefs.

Yep, also UCL jettisoned Stonewall a couple of years ago, and stood firm against protests against the decisions from students.

Avoid Staffordshire University.

Summary so far:
Purely on the basis of the alphabet, be wary of:
Loughborough
Goldsmiths
Liverpool John Moore’s
Sussex
Kent
York
Staffordshire
Exeter (mixed sex toilets)

Experience suggests a more biologically accurate approach to sex & gender:
Nottingham
Southampton
Keele
Reading
UCL

Other issues for women:
Leicester encouraging sex-work among their students (issue for both sexes!)
Warwick: unable to respond to sexual assaults on students (on campus?)

I’m finding this really useful, thankyou everyone

Yes, this is exactly the kind of info I was hoping for! Thanks for that helpful summary too @Hagosaurus

Warwick was the group chat scandal, wasn’t it, not sexual assaults? Still grim, but those are different levels of issue.

Thankyou GC
Guardian report from 2 years ago also mentions groping, but yes main issue was shared messages. Same article says it’s a widespread problem across universities - example of an Oxford student reporting rape who felt her university’s response was inadequate
https://www.theguardian.com/education/2021/apr/02/warwick-university-students-stage-sit-in-over-sexual-abuse

https://thetab.com/uk/warwick/2020/12/07/petition-for-warwick-uni-to-take-action-on-sexual-assault-cases-passes-10k-signatures-37807

However, the issue of sexual assaults on campus goes beyond any one campus unfortunately.

https://www.itv.com/news/2021-12-21/universities-failing-to-tackle-endemic-levels-of-sexual-violence-says-union

Brighton University is captured just as much as Sussex (the campuses are really close).

However, the issue of sexual assaults on campus goes beyond any one campus unfortunately.

Indeed @DrBlackbird There are quite a few accounts of sexual assaults at university on the "Everyone's Invited" website.

The podcast @Novina mentions is generally excellent (the 2 male hosts clearly concerned re Stonewall and TWAW #nodebate). Ms Reindorf basically says that , in her experience, the more working-class universities are less woke. Wokeness is a luxury belief.

LSE and UCL each hosted Hannah Barnes recently without any great fuss, and both recently ditched Stonewall. LSE had some “interesting” people within their gender studies department last year, but one at least has left. For a University specialising in social science the student body seems remarkably inactive politically. Perhaps they all want jobs with Goldman Sachs.

Avoid Bristol, though the EDI person (who gained a certain amount of notoriety during some TRA protests in Brighton) seems to have bored DDs peers into apathy. DDs complaint when facing a compulsory EDI lecture as that it would be delivered by a boring arrogant middle aged white man.

In Birmingham, BCU is fully Stonewalled, while Aston is not captured but has provision for those that need/want it (LGBTQI+ staff and student networks, but also single sex loos as well as individual unisex ones). Don't know about Birmingham Uni.

Maybe she should do her own research and decisions about her adult life.

There's no such thing as a 'captured' university. Even if captured made sense. SUs, staff, management, syllabi are all different bodies. Students everywhere are a mixed bunch - some will be into genderqueer stuff, some won't. Please don't try to curtail your kids' choices like this.

Being a sex realist at Exeter or Bristol would be tough.

Recall Raquel Rosario Sanchez case at Bristol.

Finding single sex toilets at Aston was like looking for a needle in a haystack.

Warwick is totally captured - they even have a U in the alphabet soup (no idea what it stands for) - and they have a fetish society too.

This isn’t about me curtailing my kids’ choices at all…and actually my eldest is not female, but I think unthinking adherence to gender ideology can be toxic for both males and females.

They will be making their own choice, but as we have a good, supportive and open relationship, which includes talking about all sorts of things I thought I’d gather some opinions.

percypig just ignore! It is completely reasonable to ask for other people’s experiences in a range of places, and completely valid that one of those places should be MN. If your dc asks directly about this, eg at a uni open day, they may well not get a straight answer - and they’d need to be pretty brave to ask! As pp says, it can seriously affect their experience, and I’m finding this thread useful as is my dc - obviously recognising that not everyone’s experiences of a particular uni will be the same. Thank you to everyone who has commented constructively, I hope more do so

Agree that Loughborough is probably to be avoided, which is fairly depressing given the emphasis on sport science . I was there for a work thing a couple of years ago and there were no female toilets at all in the SU. Just a locked door where they used to be.

Unfortunately it's more or less everywhere, and not really sensible or possible to choose your university on that basis. I think current 18-21 year olds have grown up with this stuff and most are able to navigate it without it taking over. The vast majority are just getting on with their social lives and degrees.

Anecdotally it does seem to be becoming a bit less fashionable with older teenagers than it was a few years ago. More of an eye-roll than a drum roll. That might be just my own impression because my dc (late teens and early 20s) have grown up a bit.

Was it Bath Spa or Uni of Bath that stopped James Caspian researching detransitioners?

I'm a Birmingham alumna and when I volunteered for their mentoring scheme a year or two ago I was asked for "my" pronouns, declined to provide them and stated why, they matched me with a very sensible undergrad who had no truck with gender ideology so my experience is neutral

I think Rosa Freedman is at Reading too.

I would also be wary of UCL too, despite some of the earlier comments; this is the university that recently withdrew researcher Lauro Favaro’s access to her own research data on the ‘gender wars in academia’, forbade her to publish her results and sacked her. Laura is yet another academic currently in the process of crowdfunding to take her former university employer to the employment tribunal ☹️