Over to you.

Thank you for taking the time to engage with our online exhibition. You may be feeling inspired by our five amazing student researchers. But you may also be feeling scared, angry, ashamed, defensive, sad, triggered, or all sorts of other difficult emotions at the end of your journey with us today.

However, we hope you are also feeling more aware and informed about the experiences and emotions of many women students at Stellenbosch University, as just one microcosm of wider South Africa and its lived realities of gender-based violence that fuel campus rape culture here.

A better understanding can help us to take small steps together, as communities, students, researchers and staff, to enable our higher education spaces to become better microcosms of the social changes we need to embed in our wider societies. This online exhibition focuses our attention on the need to tackle the root drivers that often underpin normalised gendered practices by both men and women. It does not seek to exceptionalise Stellenbosch University as a scapegoat, but to build on its public recognition of campus rape culture and its institutional support for this research project to kickstart important conversations.

Add your voice

Add your own personal contribution to those that have been featured in the exhibition. Click here if you wish to add your own short contribution of your experiences around campus rape culture to this website exhibition.

Have courageous conversations

Talk to people you know, or come in contact with in your everyday life, about the exhibition and the issues it raises. Use your influence in your residences or faculties, and with friends and colleagues to enter into dialogues.

Know your systems

Find out more about the systems of reporting and support in your university spaces, so that you know how to report and who to go to in case something happens to you or someone you know. Be allies to those who need accompaniment through this process. SU students, click here or here to get started at SU. SU staff, click here to get started.

Join the anti-GBV movement at SU

This is a collective group of SU students and staff members who are working to end GBV on campus and in wider South Africa. Click here to learn more about this network.

Get professional support

This exhibition may have made you aware that you need professional support to deal with your past experiences, We ask you to please contact someone for support. Click here for some relevant services at SU; here for the Rape Crisis website who also have a 24 hotline at 021 4479762; or here for an emergency tollfree GBV Helpline on 0800 428428.

Educate yourself about campus rape culture

  • Selected academic resources on this issue in South Africa can be found here (Le Roux), here (Palm), here (Du Toit), here (Gouws), and here (Vetten).
  • Selected initiatives from other universities in the UK and Australia working to end campus rape culture can be found here, here and here.

Help us spread the stories

Use this copy and paste “CRC- Be in the know” logo to advertise this website within your social networks and invite them to check out this exhibition. Join a movement to talk about what is going on using the hashtag #kNOwCRC. Right-click on this logo and save it on your side:

Give us feedback below

Leave us a comment in the below box on how you found the exhibition experience overall. All comments are first reviewed before going live, and no racism, sexism, homophobia or other forms of hate speech, or contributions that can be interpreted as such will be posted. We will also remove any content that may put us in legal jeopardy. This below box is not the place to add your own story. If you want to do this instead, please click here. You do not have to use your real name.