When looking at socials, I feel that there is a distinction which has to be drawn between actions which everyone would agree are blatantly wrong (such as racism or particularly sadistic initiations), and actions which can fall into more of a subjective 'grey area' such as whether someone would reasonably feel pressured to drink alcohol. The problem we have is that noone really knows in practise what SUSU's exact requirements are so there is a lot of room for interpretation, and this is something which they are actually starting to realise themselves. This is coupled with a lot of research from Universities UK which says that zero tolerance does not work and working with people in a collaborative way is the best way to improve things. Where I am talking about more of a collaborative process towards socials working with, not against clubs, I am not talking about condoning the more extreme things which come up. I'm sure that most people will agree that these sort of things do need dealing with. Instead, I am talking about having a conversation with clubs about how we approach the grey areas in the current system, and whether we should be working together with clubs to improve in these situations rather than being quick to punish people who are not setting out to harm people but instead have been caught out by a lack of awareness. A culture of learning and openess has never been created by zero-tolerance. The sheer amount of people within sports saying the current approach is piling too much stress on committees is evidence that the current approach isn't working. When we've got a situation where the social sec of one of the most caring, welfare concious sports clubs (who also doesn't drink!) is terrified of SUSU, its clear that something has gone badly wrong. In every interview I've done I have said that I am never going to say that hazing is ok because it isn't. However, I have always found that you make more progress working with people rather than against them.
This question was also only asked to SamuelAnswered by Samuel on 20/02/20 18:44