This article presents findings from an online survey gathering quantitative and qualitative data from men and women students at a university in the north of England in 2016. The survey explored their perceptions of safety and experiences of interpersonal violence during their time as a student, both on and off campus. We show how women were more likely to report sexual violence compared to men. We also show how women students, compared to men, were less likely to say they never felt unsafe as they moved away from the university into the city, and as they moved from day into night. We illustrate how interconnecting factors construct women’s perceptions of safety, and subsequently, how locations perceived as unsafe ‘hotspots’, become physical barriers impeding women’s access to public and educational spaces. Consequently, we outline measures to enhance women’s safety while at university.

Many undergraduate students in the UK fall into age groups particularly at risk from interpersonal violence. Recent evidence suggests that a range of interpersonal violence is part of the university experience for a significant number of students. In this article, we report on the findings of an online survey of male and female students administered at a university in the north of England in 2016 exploring experiences of interpersonal violence during their time as a student. Focusing on the qualitative responses, 75 respondents, mostly women, wrote about their experiences of sexual violence. In presenting women’s accounts, we challenge the construction of the ‘ideal victim’ who is viewed as weak, passive and without agency or culpability (Christie, 1986). Women adopt a range of strategies to actively resist men’s sexual violence. In doing so, they challenge and problematise perpetrators’ behaviours particularly tropes that communicate and forefront the heterosexual dating model of courtship. These findings raise implications for women’s strategies of resistance to be viewed as examples of social change where victim-blaming is challenged, perpetrator-blaming is promoted and femininity/victims are reconstructed as agentic. Universities must educate students about sexual violence, dating and intimacy, as well as provide support for victims of sexual violence.

Women fear crime more than men (Cops and Pleysier, 2011), have heightened awareness of everyday risks particularly of sexual and physical danger (Stanko, 1990), and they engage in more constrained behaviours than men (Rader, May and Goodrum, 2007; Tomsich, Gover and Jennings, 2011). Little research had examined the adoption of such risk management strategies and the impact of gender (May, Rader, and Goodrum, 2010), in an English context. However, focusing on the most at risk age-group for criminal victimisation, 393 students completed an online survey, which was designed to assess whether gender effected the strategies they adopted to prevent victimisation of both acquisitive and personal crimes, on-campus, and to staysafe. The findings indicate females are more likely to adopt risk-management strategies to prevent personal sexual attack during the day and after dark, compared to males. Females also adopt additional strategies after dark to stay-safe. The implications of the findings to convey accurate messages about risks of victimisation are discussed.

Contemporarily, universities are perceived as neoliberal entities, self-absorbed, driven by corporate interests, markets and economic goals, rather than perceived as providing a public good, concerned for the wider world (del Cerro Santamaria in Review of European Studies, 12 (1), 22–38, 2020 ). This perception of universities as individualised communities rather than collective communities (Rousseau in Social Currents, 7 (5), 395–401, 2020 ) accentuates the responsibilisation of individuals who are viewed as responsible for solving their own problems (Martinez and Garcia in What is neoliberalism , 2000 ), including ensuring their own safety (Garland in The British Journal of Criminology, 36 (4), 445–471, 1996 ). Set against this social-political backdrop, this paper, using data from an online survey about students’ perceptions of on-campus safety at a university in the north of England, shows how some students, particularly women students, view others as dangerous, rather than view them as vulnerable groups who are residing on the margins of an inequitable society. The porous borders of the university campuses amplify some students’ perceptions of dangerous others and students’ suggestions for campus security to keep out such others arguably serve to aggravate rather than relieve their perceptions of unsafety. Yet the porous borders of the campuses should be seen as advantageous because an ecological university can connect its students to the wider world to help facilitate care for the other (Barnett in The ecological university , 2018 ). In doing so, this may enhance students’ own sense of well-being and safety in the urban environment. This is a timely argument amidst a global pandemic, where the university restricts access to unauthorised others and, in doing so, facilitates the makings of an exclusive community.

Do w nlo a d e d fro m: h t t p://s u r e . s u n d e rl a n d . a c . u k/id/ e p ri n t/ 1 4 8 1 3/ 1 'I just think it's really awkward': Transitioning to Higher Education and the implications for student retention.