At a time of unprecedented social changes, due to the ongoing pandemic and long-term economic and environmental stressors, the Faculty for Social Wellbeing believes that ensuring its community of students, academics, researchers, PhD candidates, stakeholders and administrators experience safe and respectful spaces is a top priority. For this reason, ‘A SAFE SPACE FOR ALL’ has been selected as the campaign message for the student recruitment programme 2021/22.
The freedom of students, academics, researchers, PHD candidates and administrative staff must be safeguarded, within the Faculty, to explore and express their thoughts and concerns while also learning to engage in meaningful communication with people who come from very different perspectives.
Safe Space: Academic Freedom and Social Good
The notion of “safe space” is one example of a theoretical and pedagogical resource grounded in interdisciplinary studies, particularly of marginalised peoples. It proposes a relational way of being together, which encourages respectful dialogue and skills for critical thinking.
Furthermore, recognising safe spaces means that we must all consider, with heightened awareness, those students who are living difficult realities of marginalisation or vulnerability. The safe space demands that we ask how best to support their wellbeing and give voice to their experiences.
Alongside academic freedom and student safety, safe spaces also share a positive conception of social relations. The safe space sends a message beyond the Faculty, by positing the social good as a fundamental criterion for communication on campus. The social good rests upon the ability of citizens to respect one another in their basic human dignity.
Likewise, the safe space highlights the dignity of all students as worthy of safety and protection, while recognising the value that students themselves provide by contributing to a shared community of learning.
In the Faculty for Social Wellbeing, a “safe space” is usually one of two things:
- Lectures, whether on campus or online, can be designated as academic safe spaces. This means that students are encouraged to take risks and engage in intellectual discussions critically tackling topics that may feel uncomfortable or have no clear resolution. In this type of safe space, free speech and respectful communication are the goal.
- Upholding the integrity of safe spaces also means that vulnerable groups who form part of the Faculty community are provided with respect and support, particularly individuals who are at greater risk of marginalisation or exclusion. Freedom to speak is important, yet intention to incite hatred is never acceptable and for this reason, safe spaces serve a vital purpose as both a space for mediated discussion and a sounding board for problematic concepts.
Safe Space: Structural Change
The idea of safety is relational and arises in response to an actual and/or perceived threat of violence. To feel safe is to move through space (virtual or physical) without fear of violence, while feeling unsafe is a reminder of one’s vulnerability to violence. The anxiety provoked by such a sense of being unsafe, particularly among those students who already experience intersectionally vulnerabilities, is an issue of serious concern.
In fact, anxieties that arise in the expectation of violence or a lack of safety often reflect gendered, sexual, and ethnically charged power relations, which are reflected in larger instances of structural violence. While working at the micro/meso levels of students’ experiences, by creating and sustaining a practical policy of ‘safe spaces for all’, the Faculty’s overarching ethos to promote wellbeing throughout society is also taking a macro-level view of social injustice, and its far-reaching effects.
Therefore, Faculty’s commitment to “a safe space for all” stands in contrast to the structural, systemic, and endemic oppressions that populate social relations. Drawing attention to communication and its implications, in the safe spaces provided by the Faculty, encourages students to turn a critical eye towards the status quo that maintains and perpetuates marginalisation and/or exclusion.
Safe Space: Mental Wellbeing
Furthermore, the Faculty’s focus on safe spaces is a response to the risks associated with chronic anxiety, and the toll taken on emotional and psychological health as a result. Anxiety, particularly at a time of heightened uncertainty, causes complex feelings that may lead to avoidant behaviours and self-isolation.
Safe spaces create a context where such feelings can be shared and respected, without judgement or censure, and referrals for subsequent support can, if needed, be more effectively provided.
Safe Space: Self/Campus Care
Becoming conscious of how and when safe spaces are created or needed in the Faculty gives us a powerful tool to practice self-care. In this way, students are encouraged to be campus collaborators, by making thoughtful, productive contributions to difficult discussions that take place inside and outside the lecture hall.
A commitment to respectful communication and safeguarding psychosocial wellbeing is embedded in the educational experience provided by the Faculty for Social Wellbeing to its current and prospective students.
By enabling all students to participate in robust academic inquiry without compromising the holistic safety of our students, the Faculty for Social Wellbeing affirms its commitment towards a fairer, more respectful, and more equitable society.
