Interview by AMBRE PLUTA & photography by JACK LOVE
Choosing Hands Off to be the first Flipside interview this year was a no-brainer. Witnessing the continuous work and effort from Hands Off over the last two years made it an easy choice. The idea occurred to me as I stumbled upon Loïc and Vandana holding the Hands Off stall at the Welcome Fair. Hands Off is a student-led LSESU campaign raising awareness and pushing for improved policies on sexual assault on and off the LSE campus.
I had the chance to talk with three Hands Off members: Sewon Hwang, Namitha Aravind and Vandana Venkataraman.
Hands Off is a little older than 3 years old. It started around 2019 after Carol, an AU event, and was meant to be a one-time initiative around Sexual Violence Awareness Week. Namitha explained, “It was Ella Holmes and Laura Goddard who decided that LSE students needed a more substantial organisation to combat sexual violence on campus, a safe space for students to lobby and to actually enact change. They recruited first years. And here we are, trying to carry on.”
Namitha noted that a lot has been achieved since the campaign’s founding. The unwavering commitment of the students working at Hands Off has undoubtedly helped propagate change. Namitha revealed, “Everyone stays on basically throughout university.” Sewon added: “Now, even though I graduated, I still continue to work on the motion that I submitted with Vandana.”
Vandana, Sewon, and Namitha all joined Hands Off after going through bad personal experiences at the beginning of their time at the university. Namitha, who joined Hands Off at the beginning of her first year said, “I had absolutely no idea what to do about it. Because again, there was no signposting, no consent education, and it was kind of isolating. And I didn’t want anyone else to be in the same position as I was, just the blatant confusion of what the right thing to do was in that situation without a clear signposting to resources.”
In the very early days of Hands Off, the members did not receive any training. Namitha explained, “We kind of trained ourselves. It was just like trying to think about what we would have wanted, if we were in the position of a lot of victims and survivors who reached out to us.” She added, “Since then, we’ve all had disclosure training and we’ve had a lot of meetings with Laura Boland, the newly appointed anti-harassment officer.”
Although Namitha acknowledges that LSE’s hiring of an anti-harassment support advisor was a great improvement in policy, she feels that the role needs to be publicised more. “Victims and survivors still don’t really know who she is.”
Hands Off has achieved much since it has started. Perhaps the most prominent one being the Consent Ed sessions that they have pushed for since the start of Hands Off. Consent Ed is a training program devised to inform, empower, and educate all LSE students about consent. Namitha notes that for this programme, they’ve been working very closely with the SU “to get it pushed forward, to get it distributed.”
Vandana, Sewon, and Namitha mentioned several times how helpful the SU has been throughout the process. According to Namitha,“There are lots of people who do care, who work in the SU.” She added that they “put [Hands Off] on the top of their agenda, like I personally worked really closely with Robyn [Robyn McAlpine, the 2021 LSESU Education Sabbatical Officer], and she was amazing. She really, really cared about this issue, and would always consult us on Development Meetings and making sure the Consent Ed programme was running smoothly, getting us involved and like collaborating. So, we’re grateful for that.” She feels like “the [SU] really do prioritise welfare. And what Hands Off does is such a huge part of student well-being.” The current Community and Welfare Sabbatical Officer, Anaëlle Thoreau, has been involved with Hands Off since her first year, when she joined the campaign with Rahma Arifa and Eva Miccolis.
Hands Off also worked closely with the AU last year. Before Carol, they had every sports club pledge to behave responsibly. Vandana observed,“They were very enthusiastic about it as well. I think almost every team showed up.” Namitha adds that collaborating with the AU is “something we’re really keen to continue doing this year.”
Hands Off has done quite a lot of fundraising for charities. According to Vandana, the Hands Off Sway night in collaboration with the AU alone raised £1660. The total £3000 fundraised over the last academic year went towards the charity Rape Crisis UK. Vandana noted that Hands Off members “work closely with Rape Crisis UK. We fundraise for outside charities as well, focused on providing support for victims and survivors. But obviously we’d like to also expand on other possible charities as well.”
In March 2022, Hands Off supported “Charlotte”, whose name was changed to preserve anonymity, in publishing her story in The Beaver, and protested alongside her on campus. Vandana observed that after the AU night, the Charlotte article, and the protests, “People started finding out about what we were: our social media engagement increased a lot since May after the protests.” Sewon believes that the increase in student interest is one of the most tangible changes that resulted from the protest. She described her freshers days, four years ago, when “there was no mention of Hands Off or any sexual violence related talks or anything like that. No Consent Ed, no nothing.” Sewon believes people are now more interested in learning about Consent Ed and being active bystanders.
One of Hands Off’s main goals is assisting the passing of motions – which are student-led policy proposals – with the SU. Motions can be converted to official LSESU policy for two years if they pass the student body vote. Sewon explained “As students, we kind of signpost like, oh, this is a direction that we want the SU to lobby in. And then, once the motion is passed, they consider it as the guideline for lobbying the school.”
Hands Off passed a motion with the SU in March 2022, with the intent to help survivors feel adequately supported by the university; it received 574 YES votes. The motion now makes it an LSESU priority to push LSE to combat sexual violence and improve support on campus. Vandana explained, “The motion was to make up for the inadequacies of LSE’s current sexual violence provisions.” Hands Off’s demands include: making a permanent anti-sexual violence team, publishing annual reviews and increasing transparency, creating a sexual violence IT platform, and signing the #cantbuymysilence pledge. The #cantbuymysilence pledge aims to end the use of Non-Disclosure Agreements for complaints about sexual harassment and assault. The pledge started getting more recognition around January 2022 and since, a lot of UK universities such as UCL and Cambridge have signed it. As of the date of issue, according to the website #cantbuymysilence, several universities including LSE, KCL and Imperial College have not signed the #cantbuymysilence pledge.
As we reached the end of our interview, I asked them what was next for Hands Off. Immediately, Namitha exclaimed, “We’ve got so much more to do!” She continued, “I’m really proud of the Consent Ed programme, but it does need to be balanced, we need to make it more inclusive. We want it to be more reflective of the student body here at LSE.” Namitha added that another key priority of Hands Off was to make the LSE complaints process a lot smoother for victims and survivors. She said, “If someone’s had a negative experience of sexual violence, there is a reporting process at LSE, where you can formalise your complaint, especially if the perpetrators are fellow students. But, as you’ve already read in the Charlotte article, it is a very traumatic process that has done a huge injustice to victims and survivors. So, we want to help streamline that and make it better.” One member explained, “making LSE care about what we care about and prioritising it has been difficult at times, they have an agenda and scarce budgetary resources too, that don’t necessarily prioritise our [agenda].”
The three of them are really proud of the work they are able to do at Hands Off. The members noted that a big part of what Hands Off has tried to do is “be the middleman”. They explained, “There were actually a lot of resources available that [LSE] has put money in, but they haven’t made those resources [easily accessible] to students, like the website can be really hard to navigate.”
In the pictures, you see Loïc Stuart-Delavanine and N.S joining Sewon, Namitha and Vandana. Hands Off is a growing organisation, with passionate students working persistently to help make the LSE campus safe for everyone. You could be one of them. Hands Off is always recruiting and if you are interested, contact Hands Off on their Instagram or feel free to reach out directly to any of their members.
