By: Rebecca Stanton
If you were on campus during Welcome Week, you may have come across a pop-up stall outside the Student Union. Here, you may have been asked to sign your name on a piece of ribbon and tie it to a string-covered board with the slogan ‘Knot In My Name’ written across it. This board is the Consent Mural, and each knot symbolises a pledge to make campus safer for all students at LSE.
This new, important campaign is working to improve safety on campus by changing the culture surrounding sexual harassment and misconduct. It looks to expand and improve upon current safety measures, citing that they do not go far enough to protect students and victims.
The Knot In My Name campaign aims to:
1) Make Consent-Ed training compulsory for all staff at LSE.
2) Demand a reform of the current ‘archaic’ and ‘ineffective’ procedures for reporting sexual misconduct at LSE that offers more urgency and support to victims.
The movement comes following The Beaver’s release of an article in March 2024, exposing allegations of sexual harassment and assault of multiple lecturers and research students by an LSE professor. The article emphasised LSE’s shortcomings in investigating and acting upon reports of sexual misconduct.
This abuse of power and LSE’s apparent dismissal of the victim’s concerns was a shock to the School community. For many, with the continued employment and on-site presence of the accused professor, it feels like LSE has done little to ensure student safety on campus.
The Knot In My Name campaign, however, is the Student Union’s answer to this, pressuring LSE Senior Management to go further in its approach towards tackling sexual violence by putting their demands into action. By encouraging new and ongoing students to pledge to create a safe campus, the campaign emphasises the needs of the student body and allows students to show a united front for consent culture.
An LSE Spokesperson said :
“LSE has developed, and continues to develop, a number of measures to ensure we have a learning and working environment free of all types of harassment and violence.”
“These measures include an all-staff online training course on addressing harassment and sexual misconduct affecting students, developed with Advance HE – tailored to LSE’s needs and linked to our policies. It also equips staff with the skills and confidence to take a disclosure and support those involved should an incident occur. After a successful pilot, this is being rolled out across the School.”
“Likewise, we have implemented a new Report + Support system to ensure that responses to harassment allegations from both students and staff is quick and consistent. The system also provides easily accessible information on free, confidential, independent support and counselling for any LSE staff or student affected by sexual harassment or violence.”
“LSE’s approach on this vital area is grounded in sector-leading policies. These policies include the prohibition of personal relationships between students and staff whose role includes supervising or otherwise interacting with students as part of their job; training for specialist staff and senior leadership focused on trauma-informed investigations, adjudication, and sanctioning; and commissioning a range of dedicated external specialists to provide wellbeing support and outreach victim-survivor support services on campus.”
The spokesperson cited LSE’s policies on “the prohibition of personal relationships between students and staff, training for specialist staff and senior leadership on trauma-informed investigations”. They also highlighted LSE’s “outreach victim-survivor support services on campus” and “wellbeing support”.
Source:
Knot in my Name | Tackling sexual assault at LSE (youtube.com)
