UCD Students Union made attempts during the last week to address the claims that UCD students were involved in a Revenge Porn group.
The story, broken by the College Tribune, received national media attention.
On Friday evening, an investigation by UCD into allegations that as many as 200 people were involved in a Facebook group that posted nude pictures of female students and rated them found that the allegations were “unsubstantiated hearsay”. The report discredited the College Tribune source and found stated the group must not have existed.
It based this conclusion of the following statements:
“The College Tribune was basing their claims on hearsay, having come across the information about the rumoured Facebook page on Yik Yak”.
“On the matter of identifying any students victimised by inappropriate social media postings, despite our efforts, the investigation sought but did not find any student has come forward in recent weeks seeking support for this or any related incident from the regular or other University Services.”
The report does, however, acknowledge that the university cannot access the social media accounts of individuals.
“The University has been in contact with Ward Solutions, an independent IT Security firm, regarding this allegation and they have confirmed that “to determine any information relating to the use of social media (beyond what is publicly available), a court or legal order is required to the social media provider””.
The investigation merely conducted interviews with:
- The joint editors of the College Tribune
- The journalist who wrote the article (the reporter)
- The source “Sarah” quoted by the article
- Members of the Students’ Union (SU)
- The auditor of the Agricultural Students’ Society (Ag Soc)
- Year group representatives in the UCD School of Agricultural and Food Science, including those students managing the individual year Facebook pages
- Other relevant UCD students
- The student who initially brought the allegation to the attention of the SU in December.
Many have disputed the effectiveness of the investigation, with UCD Students Union being the latest body to issue a statement questioning the transparency of the report.
The statement is damning of UCD management for their failure to act on matters with regard to sexual harassment, sexual consent and sexual violence despite assurances to the UCD SU that they would so.
The UCD SU statement also states that appeals for action in the last few days have been “answered impatiently or angrily” and that there were even allegations that “the entire situation was manipulated by the Students’ Union to advance their consent campaign”.
The statement can be read in full below.
UCD Students’ Union – University Management & UCD 200
The current controversy over reports of a UCD revenge porn ring is being treated as a public relations matter rather than as a social policy issue to be addressed.
UCD does not have a designated sexual violence or abuse counsellor on campus nor does UCD have an official arrangement with existing sexual violence services for victims or a preventative action strategy for sexual violence.
These facts remain the same regardless of the lack of evidence supporting the existence of a specific image-sharing Facebook chat group on campus.
Now that their internal investigation into a revenge porn ring has been concluded, UCD management should commission a report into student experience of sexual harassment and violence and should further survey student understanding of sexual consent. Among other things, this report should review the need for a dedicated campus support service for survivors of sexual violence.
UCD Students’ Union have campaigned for these policy changes since last October. We have lobbied management for exactly this type of report and for a robustly promoted support service for survivors of sexual violence. We’ve also long pushed for an accessible and adequately communicated complaints procedure.
This campaign has been supported by the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre, Rape Crisis Network Ireland, NUIG researchers and UCD experts on sexual violence.
University management initially assured us of their support but failed to accompany their assurances with action. We were met with reassurances in the new year but the focus has been on public relations since reports of a student revenge porn ring were published in a student newspaper.
Any appeals for action over the last few days have been answered impatiently or angrily. It has even been alleged that the entire situation was manipulated by the Students’ Union to advance their consent campaign. In this context, following UCD’s conclusion that the report of a revenge porn ring on campus was unsubstantiated, I fear calls for reform might continue to go ignored.
This state of affairs is not entirely particular to UCD — records obtained under the Freedom of Information Act show a general laxity across Irish university campuses when it comes to correctly monitoring levels of sexual violence experienced by student populations. Rape Crisis Network Ireland have accused third level institutions of ignoring the extent of sexual violence on their campuses to protect their reputations.
Students’ Unions have worked to introduce consent workshops in places like Trinity College Dublin and NUI Galway. The need for these workshops cannot be understated given the gaping absence of a legal, statutory definition for sexual consent from Irish legislation. We’re currently lobbying UCD management for enough financial backing to sponsor similar initiatives for students of all academic programmes on campus but it’s a slow process.
Given Ireland’s rape conviction rate is 7%, you might think sexual consent and violence would be major electoral issues for the nation ahead of the general election; rape crisis centres experienced austerity cuts of over 1 million euros from 2008-2014; existing gaps in our cyber-harassment laws mean that revenge porn is not covered by any umbrella legislation and must be treated on a case-by-case basis; our basis for national policy is completely outdated and we need to carry out a comprehensive data survey on sexual violence.
In spite of these facts, however, many commentators approached the story of a revenge porn ring in UCD like an isolated incident. They refused to engage with it as symptomatic of a wider culture.
I wouldn’t hold back from criticizing UCD for inaction but the entire Irish law system needs to be reformed to better protect survivors of sexual violence. It is imperative that Government enact legislation which specifically addresses revenge porn and offers the country a full statutory, legal definition of the term and act of sexual consent.
As a nation, we must start asking serious questions about sexual consent and violence and we must address these questions to ourselves and to the people responsible for governing us.
