Strathclyde Telegraph News

University under criticism for ‘victim blaming’ in Jennifer Lawrence posters

The victim blaming posters appeared all over campus this morning.

by Silja Slepnjov, Editor In Chief
Rachel Munford, Features Editor

 

The victim blaming posters appeared all over campus this morning.
The posters appeared on campus early this morning. Image courtesy of Zoe Goodwin.

 

The University has received sharp criticism for using a poster with the slogan ‘Bet Jennifer Lawrence wishes she’d used a strong password’ in an Internet security campaign.

The University took the gloating posters down around noon, after numerous students expressed their concern on social media.

Only one person, Billy McCauley, received a reply on Twitter. The politics and economics student posted a photograph of the advert, saying: “Pretty shocking victim blaming here. Will you take it down?” The University responded with a grovelling Tweet and removed the posters promptly.

//platform.twitter.com/widgets.jsMcCauley said: “The posters were pretty outrageous. Blaming victims is never acceptable, and in a university which should pride itself on a fantastically diverse student body, it is a shocking failure of judgement. I think it’s important for everyone, no matter who you are, you should stand up against things like this.” 

He also added that while the university quickly responded to his Tweet,  several posts from female students, that had been sent hours earlier, had been ignored.    

Zoë Goodwin was the first to notice the posters just before 10am: “I saw the poster this morning and was pretty shocked by it. It is blatant victim blaming and it’s just not acceptable – these crimes are never the victim’s fault. I’m very glad the posters are being taken down but the fact that people thought they were ok in the first place is worrying.” 

Goodwin posted her thoughts to the Women’s Action Network Facebook Group and the word spread fast from there.

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A University of Strathclyde spokesman said: “The posters are in bad taste and have now been removed from campus. The sentiment expressed is not consistent with the values of this University.”

USSA President Gary Paterson commented: “How many people did this go through before it went live. Someone set it, someone designed it, someone printed it, and someone put it up. At some point in this process someone should have seen that this wasn’t acceptable.

We are happy with the University’s fast response in taking down these posters but we need an explanation as to why this happened and why it was allowed in the first place. Abuse is no joking matter and we expect better from our university. We’ll be raising this and seeking assurances that this doesn’t happen again.”

The poster mishap has also made its way to the Independent and STV Glasgow websites.document.currentScript.parentNode.insertBefore(s, document.currentScript);