UK students are using Snapchat to campaign against sexual assault
A new campaign fronted by the young women of the University of Bristol is aiming to open a discussion and raise awareness around the topic of sexual assault and harassment.
Some female students have taken to Snapchat to share their personal experiences in a bid to showcase just how common the problem actually is.
The clips combine to make a Snapchat story that manages to be simultaneously utterly distressing and yet highly-relatable.
Bristol students use @Snapchat to #RevoltAgainstSexualAssault. Read about our campaign and watch the full version: https://t.co/O6wenj407K pic.twitter.com/mVWKIfGOeS
— Epigram (@EpigramPaper) May 17, 2017
One woman said, ''In my first term of freshers I walked a drunk friend home after a night out. I refused to let anything happen but he said, ‘It’s not rape – you want this.''
Another women revealed that she had been raped three time since starting her studies: “I’ve lived in Bristol for about five years and since being a student here I've been raped again three times and assaulted a lot. Every time it happens it's been someone that I know, I like, I love and that I see all the time.”
Some of the women chose hide their identity by covering their faces with emojis and stickers.
The campaign is the brainchild of Hannah Price, th Online Editor of the student paper, Epigram. She hoped that using a familiar platform such as Snapchat would encourage her female peers feel comfortable enough to speak up.
In an interview with The Independent, Hannah spoke about the severity of the often forgotten issue.
“While at university, whenever the topic has been discussed with my girlfriends it was always met with ‘me too,’ or similar accounts.''
She continued, “But I've watched as it has become increasingly normalised – with us all just shrugging it off. So I wanted to spark the conversation before everyone went silent on the issue.”
The response to the original story was overwhelming positive and so Hannah has since compiled the clips into a six-minute Youtube video.
“Within a few hours of posting the original story I was contacted by a male survivor from the university who wanted to tell me he was touched by the campaign and thanking me for raising the voice on the issue,” Hannah revealed to The Independent.
We applaud Hannah and the women of the University of Bristol for brining light to a topic has become increasingly normalised over the years.
