Motion 408: Defending Safe(r) spaces and No Platforming
Submitted by: Individuals
Speech for: Individual
Speech against:
Summation: Last Successful Amendment
Conference Believes
1. Safe(r) spaces can be defined in different ways, but common elements include zero tolerance
for discriminatory behaviour, being aware of the impact of one’s language, having autonomous
spaces for marginalised groups and being respectful of marginalised people’s subjective
experiences.
2. No platforming is a strategy used by Students’ Unions whereby they don’t provide a forum for
known oppressors or allow elected officers to share a platform with them.
3. Safe(r) spaces, no platforming and related measures such as the use of content warnings have
widely been criticised in parts of the media, with many commentators arguing that they serve
to simply ban opinions certain students don’t like and thereby censor free speech in
universities.
4. The magazine Spiked has created a ‘Free Speech University Ranking’, where universities and
SUs are assessed as to whether they ‘ban or actively censor ideas on campus’ or ‘chill free
speech through intervention’.
5. Misogyny, transphobia, racism and biphobia are often present in LGBT+ societies. This is
unfortunately more likely to occur when the society is dominated by white cis gay men.
6. The reps system exists to ensure that societies committees can always have a reserved place
for groups which disproportionately face oppression within the LGBT+ community.
7. Gay men do not face oppression as gay men within the LGBT+ community and do not need a
reserved place on society committees.
Conference Further Believes
1. There is no single definition of a safe(r) space. The term means different things to different
communities and individuals, and this is a strength of the term.
2. Safe(r) spaces are essential to liberation. When they are debated for academic ends, a concept that is
vital to the active participation of many students on campus is undermined.
3. Marginalised students should not be expected to debate what are often uncomfortable and/or triggering
issues for the benefit of ‘free speech’.
4. Free speech does not exist in a vacuum. If oppressive it has often damaging consequences for
marginalised people in ways privileged people cannot understand, and accusing students who need safe(r)
spaces of being coddled or authoritarian erases their experience of oppression.
5. No platforming is not censorship. Students’ Unions have a choice of who to host as speakers, and
denying them that platform is a choice that SUs should feel free to make on ideological and welfare-based
grounds. There are no consequences for those who fall foul of safe(r) space and no platforming policies
apart from them not being provided a platform as they are not being prevented from speaking overall.
6. Providing prejudiced people a platform on which to express bigotry justifies academic debate over
people’s personal experience of oppression, which further marginalises oppressed groups.
7. Spiked Magazine’s university rankings are vile. They are the epitome of this challenge to safe(r)
spaces, and they are misleading and wrongheaded.
Conference Resolves
1. To work with other liberation campaigns to create an intersectional working group on building and
maintaining safe(r) spaces, specifically liaising with liberation committees in CMs to provide advice on
how safe(r) spaces can be maintained.
2. To loudly and vociferously defend the concept of the safe(r) space and no platforming.
3. To actively support SUs in implementing safe(r) spaces and no platforming policies.
4. To encourage LGBT+ Societies that have a gay men’s rep to drop the position.
http://nusdigital.s3-eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/document/documents/22513/Composited_LGBT_motions_and_amendments_2.3_NO_NAMES.pdf?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJKEA56ZWKFU6MHNQ&Expires=1458969219&Signature=KyZDFCJc95boPPsd5Ccudj9CMjk%3D
Well, as a left wing rights campaigner myself am I wrong to find this amendment really annoying? I didn't expect any less from the NUS to be honest but...