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Tweet from Sherwood Hall

#freshersweeksexism has come into the public eye after the Everyday Sexism Project received many tweets reporting incidents of sexism in the very first week at university. This led Jane Martinson from The Guardian newspaper to look into freshers' week sexism and how rife it is in university culture.

From this hashtag, many students came forward with their stories of sexism at Freshers' Week, from Freshers' Fair posters saying 'F**K ME I'M A FRESHER' to the Lad Bible advising boys that 'The most important thing for any LAD at uni is going out to get smashed, and to get some back doors smashed in!'

The University of Nottingham was hoping to avoid having to speak out about this issue, however after Lincoln and Sherwood Halls' twitter accounts have come under fire for tweeting pornographic images and suggestive messages such as 'Freshers' week won't be the only time I will be visiting Freshers' rooms - #comeatmegirls', they have been forced to make a statement.

The statement came from Welfare Officer Mike Dore:

A Bouncer Investigation.

Throughout the year we’ve been investigating bouncers in Nottingham. We’ve heard your thoughts about the people who supervise at doors of nightclubs -both positive and negative- and the bouncers themselves shared with us what it was like to be in charge of students. After investigating your experiences with bouncers we found that despite differing opinions over them, one collective opinion was how difficult it was to make a complaint if you had had a negative experience. We looked further into this. There are so many parties involved in the world of bouncers and we spoke to them all including the SIA, the club owners and the police. The fact that there are so many involved parties could make it easier for those involved to protect themselves by deflecting blame. So, who’s protecting who?

If you have ever had an experience with a bouncer that has stayed with you and want to hear what your rights are and how things can be improved, listen to our investigation to hear all about it:

Leaving your bin out could cost you money

Have you ever forgetten to take your bin in? Do you confuse how to recycle your house's rubbish? When students watch every penny waste management can get serious if you're trying to avoid being fined by the council for both of these things. We investigated the rules around waste and asked students why they've been fined.

This week Sarah Piper, a councillor for Lenton and Dunkirk, got in touch with URN to promote her student focus on waste management. She spoke to us about the problems students have with recycling and why this is a student issue:

So we asked the Community Officer at the students' union, Sian Green, about how she has dealt with students receiving waste fines:

Val, a student here at the University of Nottingham, has a typical story of fines over bins and told us how she reduced her fine using Sian’s advice:

Throughout the show we got texts in with some people saying they had not experienced any problems:

I live in Beeston and a couple of times we have forgotten to pull it in for a few days and nothing has happened. - Sam

Have you ever thought about what the students here at the University of Nottingham cope with? Our series- Student Stories- gets to know the students who make up the diverse population here on campus and tells how there is no typical student experience.

Current student Thomas Denton and recent graduate Hannah Trenear have Aspergers Syndrome which is part of the Autism Spectrum Disorder. Typical difficulties are in social communication, interaction and imagination but what was clear from speaking to Hannah and Thomas, is that everyone’s experiences are different and one size doesn’t necessarily fit all. The National Autistic Society says that there are over half a million people in the UK with an autism spectrum disorder- that’s around one in a hundred people.

We don’t know how many students here at the University of Nottingham have such disorders as, to an extent, you self-define with your own label and the University doesn’t require you to disclose it. That’s why we asked them to discuss the term ‘disorder’ and how Hannah and Thomas feel about being coined as disabled by some.

As well as these broader questions we focussed on the social side of university life: group projects, love lives and nights out.

Listen to Hannah and Thomas’ story here…

The notorious Rate Your Shag pages that spread over Facebook on Monday 27th May were publicly condemned by the University who threatened disciplinary action for anyone posting defamatory posts. All Rate Your Shag pages were then subsequently deleted by web superpower Facebook.

What is it about these pages that caused the university to step in and take action?

You can listen back to our Monday show where our Pulse team discussed the naming and shaming phenomenon as it hit our news feeds:

http://urn1350.net/blog/pulse/2013/05/rate-your-shag-do-you-rate-it-or-s...

They got in touch with the admin of the Nottingham site who remained anonymous but said that:

The only real criticism I have received is from people who find the whole concept offensive but saying that there is an option to hide this page from their feeds.

Well, it seems that people won’t have to hide the page from their newsfeeds anymore as not only did the university threaten any student posting on it with disciplinary action, but Facebook deleted it.

We spoke to Harry Waddle, the Students Communications Officer, to see why the university took the stance it did: