The students fight back

Last week, students at York University staged a walkout from the sexual consent classes organised by their student union women’s officers. A quarter of the freshers decided they didn’t want to be lectured to by union worthies about when it’s OK to have sex. So they got up and left.

‘These talks are inherently patronising of both genders,’ said Ben Froughi, a third year accounting student at York, who had stirred up sex class dissent by handing out leaflets telling students the classes were optional and they didn’t have to attend.

But sex consent classes are mandatory at some universities, including Cambridge and Oxford. Young people are being chaperoned through the minefield of sexuality, often against their will. Union officials make out ‘as if they are more enlightened’, says George Lawlor. He is another revolter: a 20 year old politics student at Warwick who caused a media stink last year when he published an article about why he didn’t need consent classes, with a photograph of him holding a sign that read: ‘This is not what a rapist looks like.’