By Sana Agarwal
I met Tito on the 6th floor of the Saw Swee Hock building. We seated ourselves on one of the desks on the corner and started chatting instantly about all things LSE. Tito is now a Master’s student here, and a two-time women’s officer at the LSESU; she is now serving her second term after a very successful first one last year. In my interview with Tito, we discussed various topics, including her time working with the SU and with the Hands Off campaign, policy proposals, ConsentEd, creating space for survivors, and her personal motivation for her role.
We kickstarted the interview by discussing Tito’s time at LSE as an undergraduate student. She said, “First year and my second year were kind of disconnected from LSE.” She explained her motivation to run for the Women’s Officer role, “I had lots of ideas and lots of things that interested me, but I wanted to do something that made me feel like a part of it.” Tito, as a Nigerian who grew up in London, further elaborated how her cultural ties and the lack of women’s rights in Nigeria motivated her to take this role. She spoke about an incident of kidnapping of the Chibok school girls in Nigeria, “That was the first time I’d ever encountered feminism. From then on, I just knew that that was something that I really cared about. I think, deep down, even if [the work] is tiring, I know then that’s really why I’d do anything in the first place.”
Tito went on to explain the outcomes of her work; though she first summarised her two main motivating goals: accessibility and intersectionality. Last year, Tito and her team started Women’s Town Halls, now known as Women’s Forums (in an attempt to make it more informal) alongside Sarah Trotter, the Women’s Advisor at LSE. Women’s Forums are termly meetings which serve as a platform for women and others to express their complaints, find resources or simply meet others. “It wasn’t even about the numbers or about it looking amazing. It was more about the fact that it even existed in the first place, [that] there is a Women’s Forum on campus. At first, [people] were a bit apprehensive to say how they felt about something. And then, the conversation just became so inclusive. It was so rewarding to see a community forming.”
Tito expressed optimism, revisiting the emotions she felt after the first forum took place last year. “We [had] trans and non-binary students come, [it] was so encouraging to know that I had marketed it in a way that they didn’t exclude it.” She further explained how these forums have been impactful beyond the realms of the meeting room. One such instance can be noted in the case of the poor conditions of prayer rooms for women. Tito recalled, “The women’s prayer room was like an old cupboard that was converted into a prayer room, and that was a big problem raised to us in the town hall that we needed to fix.” Tito and her team passed a policy proposal to create a mandate for the SU to remedy this, which was successfully passed.
Another one of Tito’s triumphs is one shared with Hands Off LSE. They have been working together relentlessly to assist survivors on campus, with the united mission of uplifting and safeguarding women. Earlier this month, Hands Off LSE launched an anonymous disclosure form, where a student can write a story, about something that happened to them or someone they know anonymously. “If they want to be advised on how to report it, or get some extra support, they can put that email and it’s optional…even [to] get something off your chest just to share and have somewhere to say it happened,” Tito clarified. A more upcoming project is a ConsentEd panel taking place in November called: Locker Room Talks, in an attempt to reclaim the practice from its derogatory meaning. The panel consists of Tito and other panellists along with the leaders of male-dominated sports like football, and tennis discuss consent and rape culture in sports clubs.
When talking about Tito’s goal of intersectionality, she elaborated on her work with Hannah, the LSESU LGBTQ+ Officer. The duo are working together to organise events where gender non-binary, genderfluid, transgender, and others can come and discuss their experiences, especially concerning sexual harassment and assault. Tito expanded, “I do feel like we’re talking a lot about sexual assault and sexual harassment. But that is experienced at a significantly higher rate by people who are gender non-binary and trans. So I think it’s very marginalising to only really have that conversation around women students.” She further emphasised the importance of inclusivity, “I feel like so many of us have experiences [that] are intersectional every day. So if I’m going to go and do a campaign, I need to make sure that it is also intersectional. It reflects real life for so many people.”
When asked about working at LSESU and her Women’s Officer team, Tito answered, “We had a massive team last year. This year, I decided to cut it down and make it a smaller committee. Basically, all the girls on the team are the people who ran against me when I ran to the Women’s Officer a second time, and I thought — why don’t we all work together?” Expressing the feeling of womanhood in her team, Tito said, “Being on a team of women, there is an acknowledgement of leadership, but everyone’s a leader in their way. I don’t feel like it’s all about me. I feel like everyone is leading in different ways. And then we’re all coming together and seeing if it works, seeing what we could change.” She further expressed the need for a working women’s body and their positions at major roles at the LSESU, “I think when the issues we’re talking about are personal to the people who are trying to do something about it, you can tell that there’s a difference [in action].”
Tito reflected, “I think that a lot of being a part-time officer is about collaboration because I think that people often won’t know about it otherwise. You’ve got a small budget and you’re given an important role, but [it’s] also underrated and small. And it needs to really thrive. So I feel like collaboration is a way to achieve your goals.” Collaboration is important to Tito more broadly when she is working with student groups like Hands Off, Advancing Black Careers and the various women’s societies. An example of the same is her collaborative panel with ABC: ‘Black Women in Leadership’ and a week in November for women’s activism, where many women’s AU clubs and career societies will be organising events. Tito noted, “It’s great that we’re not just campaigning to march for women because I know that normally Women’s Week is in March, [and] everyone’s talking about women, and we’re going crazy. But it’s cool that they’re also doing that at other times of the year.”
Tito, when asked about her most important project this year, answered right away, “The SU is creating the inclusion space. The week beginning the sixth of November, they are launching the space. It will be a room, an area where minorities can go and have their events, their talks, and things like that, including me and all the other part-time officers. So you’re going to have an event every night there.” A clear indication of her goal of inclusivity.
I inquired about her flagship event – Women’s Week in March. Tito candidly discussed her planned changes to the already-successful Women’s Week from last year, “We’re planning not really to throw events ourselves. Because so many societies do events already, we realise it’s kind of overkill. We basically decided to do more charity, and I’m just hoping that we can raise a significant amount of money for a really small local charity for women. That’s our plan.”
Tito, now in her second term as the Women’s Officer, retrospected, “[This position] taught me a lot about leadership. And I think that something I’ve learned now is that, less is more sometimes. Sometimes, just strip it back and just do a couple of things [instead].” Tito explained her limited, but substantial impact goals, “You don’t need to try and save the world, you just need to work hard.” Tito’s hard work can be highlighted in the three policy proposals she and her team undertook. The first aims to make menstrual health conditions a special extenuating circumstance with regard to exams — for instance, if you have endometriosis, or if you’re in excruciating period pain and it impairs your daily functions. The second is to make drink covers mandatory at all SU events, whether on campus or off campus, to prevent spiking. Finally, the third is to make menstrual products available in all the buildings on campus. In an amazing feat,” the three [policy proposals] were passed.” Tito confessed, hoping to have them in place before the end of this academic year.
As we approached the end of the interview, Tito and I began talking about the emotional hardships that come along with such a role. “Every third conversation I’ll hear about harassment or abuse or some form of misconduct. Sometimes you feel like you can’t escape it,” Tito confessed, indicating the harsh nature of her work. “I think it’s the same with any minority group, [being] a minority in multiple different ways has taught me how to not focus just on the struggle, but also to focus on the celebration because that’s also a part of it.”
To this, she added her closing remarks, “I think being a woman is amazing. It’s so difficult but it’s so amazing. And I think all the parts of me that, if I could change, I actually wouldn’t. I would keep it all the same because I think that it’s a part of identity. And even in the struggle, you find so much community and you find so much motivation and knowledge that you wouldn’t have found. So in a way, it’s so difficult, but also I hope that we can celebrate [it] as well. I hope that this year, we’ll celebrate us.”
