Legal and social issues affecting women and girls
Extraordinary.
Swansea [University] Union issues a statement:
The University recently informed the Union that an external community group, Swansea Bay ReSisters, is hiring Swansea University’s Taliesin Arts Centre for an event on 31st August 2023 focussing on legal and social issues affecting women and girls in Wales.
This event has not been promoted, encouraged, or planned by the University, the Taliesin or the Students’ Union.
Wait, what? Why the need to frantically distance the university and the union from a discussion of legal and social issues affecting women and girls in Wales? Is that a taboo subject in Wales?
The Union acknowledges the impact this event could have on students, staff and the wider community, but also understands that the Taliesin is bound by the same legislation and statutory duties as the wider University.
Impact? Impact? What impact? What’s so horrifying about a discussion of legal and social issues affecting women and girls in Wales? To be clear: I haven’t skipped anything from this statement, so there is no missing explanation in these first three paragraphs. That’s all there is: women are meeting to discuss issues; we apologize for the horror.
The University has previously engaged with and explained to the Students’ Union that in the UK, Universities have a statutory duty to ensure freedom of expression and freedom of speech the way in which the law defines it. This legislation binds the University to protecting the rights of any individual to express their opinions on topics, regardless of the University community or Union’s stance on the issue. The University informed us that in order to discharge its statutory duty, it took the decision to accept the booking.
The booking of a discussion of legal and social issues affecting women and girls in Wales. We still haven’t been told what the problem is.
As a Students’ Union, we have always firmly stood with our Trans and Non-Binary students and wish again to echo our support for the community at this time.
What’s that got to do with anything?
We understand that for many of our students, your officers included, this event taking place on our campus is upsetting and uncomfortable.
They understand that? How? Why is this event upsetting and uncomfortable? They’re upset and uncomfortable because women are meeting to discuss issues that affect women and girls? Why????
Please be assured that your Union will continue to work closely with the University on the impact this event may have on the student community.
There is support available for anyone affected by this issue, through our Advice & Support Centre or through the Welfare Team in Campus Life, their contact details are below.
Still not a word of explanation of how and why this event may have some mysterious kind of “impact on the student community.”
If you have any further questions, you can contact our team on fto@swansea-union.co.uk.
Trans rights are human rights.
– Your Full-time Officers
The end. Not one word to explain the connection between women talking about women’s issues and all this upset and discomfort and impact. There are just the totemistic mentions of trans people and trans rights, but no link to the upset n discomfort n impact. Are trans people allergic to women, so allergic that they can’t be on the same campus with them even for an hour or two? Is that it?
If you think women and girls protecting their rights might negatively affect yours, you know what you’re not? A woman or a girl.
They’ve been primed to see any discussion of the rights of girls and women as a slight against TiMs. They know that there is a conflict in rights, but they can’t come out and say it bacause they’re supposed to “know” that there is NO CONFLICT. They know that TiMs are tetrchy about this because they know that TiMs aren’t women, but they can’t say this either, because they “know” TWAW. It’s a subtext made up entirely of Stockholm Syndrome, self censorship, and doublethink.
A minor detail, this, but it’s one that jumped out at me.
The event is on the 31st August. Term at most UK universities doesn’t start until the third week or so of September; and checking Swansea’s site, semester 1 doesn’t actually begin there until the 25th. Now, it may be that there’s an introductory week before that – so let’s say that students’ll be back on the 18th, give or take: two or three weeks, that is, after the event.
Of course, not all students vanish over the summer. Doctoral students’ll still be around; and there might be the odd MA student putting the finishing touches to their dissertation at the end of August, and they may pop into campus for some reason. But, by and large, there’ll be very few people about the place. Most staff will be working from home if at all possible.
And so one wonders what impact, precisely, an event like this would have on the student community. In fact, one wonders whether whatever impact it does have might actually be more directly attributable to the Union’s statement than to the event itself, which – I would wager – would otherwise have gone completely unremarked.
Dang, I didn’t even notice that. August 31 is a dead time of year for universities here too. All this panic and heavy breathing because an external group interested in women’s rights rented a university building for an evening when the campus is mostly empty.
Maybe the union statement was made to publicize the event to trans activists who would otherwise not be there. Can’t have such a meeting take place unopposed, can we? That would be letting the side down, wouldn’t it?
Nailed it, Bruce.
Tattle-tales’ rights are human rights!
The organization holding the meeting, Swansea Bay ReSisters, has the audacity to include this tidbit in their “about” page:
Can’t have that, apparently. And can’t mention that when declaring the organization is beyond the pale, for reasons explained well by YNnB above.
Colleges that don’t start until September? I’ve never gone to one of those. Usually the last week (or two weeks) in August. My school changed our contract year so they could start on August 15, or earlier. But some schools do start later; I just never knew one that started in September, at least, not since I left grade school in Maine.
My entire school experience in the Northeast, kindergarten through graduate school, involved schools that started after Labor Day. Here in Alabama, schools start in the first half of August. My family back in the Northeast continues to be surprised when I talk about schools having started up already around here (first day of school is this week). The school year ends earlier, too, around here; Northeast elementary schools continued through the entire month of June, but here they end in May. Colleges all seem to follow the pattern of the local primary and secondary schools, perhaps for pragmatic reasons.
@Bruce – You may well be right!
@iknklast – Schools start in early September, universities mid-to-late September.
This inspired me to check the academic calendar at my son’s college. Like most local schools, classes start the week after Labor Day (observed the first Monday in September). The weeks before, at both colleges and schools, may be taken up with such things as orientation, auditions, registration, parents paying tuition, pre-season sports practices, etc.
It seems that’s somewhat unusual; less than a quarter of school districts start after Labor Day. Substantially all schools in the US used to start in September, which is why wizened geezers like me can’t remember ever going to school in August, but most localities have pushed it back to August, or some even to July (looking at you, Hawaii).
Pew has a good rundown on regional differences:
https://www.pewresearch.org/short-reads/2019/08/14/back-to-school-dates-u-s/