Section:GDN 1N PaGe:7 Edition Date:190812 Edition:01 Zone: Sent at 11/8/2019 18:23 cYanmaGentaYellowbl
Monday 12 Aug ust 2019 The Guardian •National^7
Sally Weale
Education correspondentT
he new president of
the National Union of
Students has called for
the government’s anti-
radicalisation Prevent
strategy to be scrapped
and urged universities to do more to
tackle the black attainment gap and
racism on campus.
In her fi rst interview since taking
offi ce last month, Zamzam Ibrahim
said she had seen the eff ect of
Prevent in universities , with events
cancelled and students referred
because of membership of societies
connected to Palestine or Islam.
She said her overarching aim
was to campaign for a fully-funded,
fully-accessible education system.
“That’s not an education system that
includes surveillance of a particular
minority group,” she said.
Ibrahim, 25, who was previously
president of the students’ union
at the University of Bradford,
was elected at the NUS annual
conference in Glasgow in April.
“I’ve dealt with many cases of
Prevent when I was president of
my students’ union and when I
came into NUS,” she said. “There
w ere too many cases where they
were referred because they were
a member of a society. It’s usually
the Palestine society, or the Islamic
society, and I think that’s a clear
route of allowing discrimination in
our education system.”
The government has agreed to
an independent review of Prevent,
in response to widespread concern
that it fosters discrimination
against people of Muslim faith or
background and inhibits legitimate
expression. “The Prevent agenda
does not need a review,” said
Ibrahim, “it needs to be scrapped.”
Ibrahim, who was born in Sweden
and is the daughter of Somali
refugees who fl ed civil war , has
spoken out against the media for
portraying her as a “fanatical Muslim
and a threat to British society” on
the basis of comments she wrote on
social media as a 16-year-old.
In one she joked that if she
were president she would oppress
white people “to give them a taste
of what they put us through”. Inanother she said everyone should
read the Qur’an. The response was
devastating. “I suddenly felt unsafe
in my own campus, in my own
space,” she said.
Ibrahim, who came to the UK
at the age of 10 and was brought
up in Bolton, said her adolescent
comments were twisted to make
them seem more sinister than they
were ever intended to be, and in no
way represented her views today.
“It was something that was
blown out of proportion. I think
people know and understand I’m
a completely diff erent person
from the 16-year-old child that I
was, who had no political training
and no political education at all at
that time.”
She said her experience was
common among young people from
Muslim backgrounds or of colour
who dare to step into the public
sphere. “To me, what’s been thematter how frequent it happens,
what the context is, where it
happens or who the perpetrators are,
I will always be racially profi led and
discriminated against. Who you are,
what you’ve achieved and what you
do will never matter.”
She takes over at a diffi cult time
for the union, which has been
forced to undergo a radical overhaul
because of a £3m defi cit – slashing
staff numbers, cutting offi cer
roles and selling off its London
headquarters in Gray’s Inn Road to
avoid fi nancial collapse.
The union’s new London home is
in a corner of Hackney Community
College. Despite the scaled-down
nature of the organisation she now
leads, Ibrahim talks with relish
about campaigning. “I want to
change the narrative of the way we
talk about education and for people
to understand education is for the
public good. I’ve been in the sector
for years and seen the mess that
it has got into, and the mess it’s
heading towards.
“Free education is not about me.
I’ve got my degree. It’s about future
generations that are going to come
after me.”Student speaks
out over rape
complaint hit
by rule change
at Cambridge
David BattyOne of the women affected by
Cambridge University’s decision not to
investigate some student complaints
of sexual misconduct, including rape,
has said it left her feeling re-victimised.
Faye (not her real name) said th e
June ruling by Cambridge’s discipline
committee that sexual misconduct
should no longer be covered by its
general disciplinary regulations for
students had led to her rape complaint
against a male student being dropped.
The decision had turned her “ from
a survivor to a victim” and denied her
justice. “ I was powerless ,” she said.
Cambridge academics and student
union officials condemned the
university’s response to the ruling,
which they said did not address the
fact that vulnerable women had been
left without any internal means to pur-
sue complaints of sexual assault and
rape.
Faye submitted her rape com-
plaint in October 2018, eight months
before one of the chairs of Cambridge’s
disciplinary committee, which is
independent of the university’s cen-
tral administration, ruled that the
regulations covered allegations of
harassment but not sexual miscon-
duct. The ruling led to another alleged
sexual assault being dismissed. The
university informed Faye that even if
the chair had been wrong , he consid-
ered there was insuffi cient evidence to
proceed. During the case, the defend-
ant was allowed to respond to Faye’s
written evidence. She did not have an
opportunity to respond because the
case was dismissed before a full hear-
ing of the committee could take place.
Faye described the process as “eight
months of hell”. She said she suff ered
constant anxiety because she feared
seeing her alleged rapist on campus.
The university is introducing a pro-
cedure from 1 October that will defi ne
sexual misconduct as a breach of the
rules of behaviour for students. But
complaints about sexual misconduct
that occurred before that date – even
if reported later – will be investigated
under the old procedures.
Charlotte Proudman, a barrister and
research fellow at Queens’ College,
Cambridge, condemned the univer-
sity’s senior pro-vice- chancellor,
Graham Virgo, for claiming in a letter
to the Guardian that all students were
being protected from harassment.
“Th ey have let down a number of
women whose complaints have been
dropped because of this, ” she said.
In a letter to the Guardian , Kate
Litman , the women’s offi cer at Cam-
bridge students’ union, said the
change would harm student victims
of sexual violence “for years to come”.
A Cambridge University spokesman
said it had no further comment.Journal Letters Page 6 New NUS
president
‘I’ll always
be racially
profi led,
no matter
what I do’
PHOTOGRAPH: GRAEME ROBERTSON/THE GUARDIAN
most upsetting thing is to see young
people who would be incredible
in these roles to not even think of
running because of the backlash
that I faced. If it had been any of
my white peers or colleagues they
would never have experienced that.”
Ibrahim, who studied fi nance
at university, said she worried
about putting herself forward as
a candidate to lead the NUS after
witnessing the experience of Malia
Bouattia , the fi rst Muslim NUS
president, who was subjected to
Islamophobic attacks and hate-fi lled
trolling on social media.
“ It was the biggest factor that was
putting me off – the backlash and the
vilifi cation and all the horrors that
would come with it. But at the same
time I recognise it’s not something I
should be afraid to do and I want to
be able to encourage young people –
especially young girls that look like
myself – to be able to come into these
spaces and make decisions for the
institutions they represent and be
unapologetic for who they are.”
Meanwhile, she says, the
Islamophobia directed at young
women like her continues. On
Wednesday, she tweeted : “It doesn’t‘Too many Prevent
cases were related to
being a member of
the Palestine society,
or the Islamic society’Zamzam Ibrahim
NUS president£3m
The National Union of Students’
budget defi cit, forcing it to cut staff
and sell off its London headquartersРЕЛИЗ ПОДГОТОВИЛА ГРУППА "What's News" VK.COM/WSNWS