Take 300 shouting women, throw in a few placards and a route through Cambridge's historic streets.
What lured them all away from the revision-steeped confines of college libraries, colour-coded flash cards and the promise of Dr Who on iplayer after a hard day's work?
It was none other than Cambridge's Reclaim the Night march, which on Saturday demanded safer streets and better lighting across the city.
Photo: Colin McSwiggen
Following waves of sexual assaults and murders, and having been told to stay in their homes to ensure their safety, women in their thousands first took to the streets to 'Reclaim the Night' in the 1970s.
40 years later, the message is the same; safety is the absence of the threat of violence, rather than finding the nearest lad from your College drinking society to walk you home from Cindies, via the Van of Death.
With an NUS study revealing that 1 in 7 (14%) female University or college students have been the victim of serious sexual assault or physical violence, and considering an estimated 47,000 rapes occur in the UK every year, there is a lot to shout about.
But, as shown by the recent attack on a male Queens' undergrad by a group of 16-year-old Cambridge locals, safe streets is not just a women's issue.
In recognition of this, Saturday's 'male solidarity demonstration' pulled more men than the huge annual London march, and the candle-lit vigil at King's College Chapel included as a speaker the Executive Director of White Ribbon Campaign UK, which lobbies men to condemn violence against women.
With the resurrection of the London march in 2004 and increasing numbers of rallies in other UK towns and cities, we are again starting to question the responsibility assigned to women subject to violence.
But, as the City Council remains reluctant to improve street lighting, the march is just a small step on the road to stopping night time violence against women and improving safety for both genders.
I think it's demeaning to women and the problem of violence against women to suggest that my taking a pole dancing class compounds the problem.
The Women's Union and those on the march are very divided about the pole dancing issue. Not all of us are against it which is why we are now having a debate about it on Wednesday at Kings College.
On another note the march was a great success and brought together so many people who want to stop violence against women.
They were carrying signs with blue text, I thought it was a Tory protest and shouted abuse. They didn't like that.
The Tab spends a lot of time criticising CUSU; sometimes rightly so. In this article, however, the Tab is praising the Reclaim the Night march organised by the CUSU Women's Union, but at no point does it mention CUSU at all. Give CUSU the credit it deserves when it succeeds.
Maybe that's because it was organised by the Women's Union and it was members of the Women's Union and not CUSU who did all the preparation and who volunteered on the night. Interestingly, some important members of the newly elected CUSU didn't even show up.
erm… How does 'beauty pageants, pole dancing and underpaid female Dons' have anything to do with street safety?! Slightly ridiculous last paragraph…
The streets are unsafe, women are of course, more vulnerable than men – but that doesn't mean that the council failing to light up the streets is a direct gender issue!?!?
Beauty pageants and pole dancing perpetuate the view of women as sexualised/willing to be sexualised, increasing sexual harrassment on streets/in clubs, etc. (That is my opinion, I am fully aware people would disagree with this). They reinforce the culture we current live in that deem it ok to make remarks about women as they walk by, or touch them in clubs without their permission. Some men sadly go further than this in their violence, and although street lighting is not the way to solve violence against women (as the article says, the absence of violence is the aim), it goes a part of the way to making women feel safer at night. There have been lots of attacks on women in poorly lit areas in Cambridge; street safety IS a gender issue.
good to see so much clunge on tour
[...] Reclaim the Night 300 female students took to the streets to make a noise for a safer Cambridge on Saturday night. [...]
saturday nights won't be the same.