Sexual violence and misconduct are an issue here at Cardiff University and have been for a while. In December 2023 the BBC spoke to a co-founder for Time to Act, Bethia
Tucker, who said that “sexual violence had become an accepted part of life” here at the University, particularly during Students’ Union club nights. Now, almost two years, later Time to Act has become even more influential in their demands for the university to tackle this issue.

A recent three-month BBC investigation revealed that fewer than half of UK universities could provide up-to-date sexual misconduct data, with Cardiff University having few to no records and centrally held statistics prior to 2017. Within the records that are accessible, sexual misconduct and violence are prominent—with available figures from 2019–20 highlighting 219 sexual misconduct tip-offs, with over
half of those reports of incidents of assault and rape.

Time to Act is a student-led campaign aiming to tackle sexual misconduct, focusing on social media outreach, who have addressed both the need for the SU and CU societies to do better in regard to supporting survivors and mitigating sexual violence. Their recent movement “Don’t be a shitty committee” encouraged societies to pledge alongside Time to Act and show support for active bystander-ship, creating a culture of consent and holding their individual members accountable. Around 75+ societies on Instagram shared their support for this movement and pledged to follow these values.

“It is up to us as students to push for the University to make changes.”

On the 17th of October 2025, Time to Act called for the SU to “step up” in an Instagram post introducing their proposal for the upcoming AGM. The caption criticised the SU’s priorities, highlighting how the “sabbatical officers get paid £25k a year to post TikToks rather than protect their students from sexual violence” and that the SU is not doing enough to work on this issue. The post addresses the requests of Time to Act since 2023 that the Students’ Union hadn’t completed, such as data collection on sexual violence statistics and acknowledgement of failings and mandatory consent and bystander training. It called for the Students’ Union to make these issues a priority.

One week later, the SU took to Instagram to post a response—an update from the officers regarding their commitments and progress tackling sexual violence on campus. The post opened with an apology and accountability of the previous failings of the Union and declared that “tackling sexual violence is a top priority” for the team this year. The SU has begun conversations with the University for a review of student conduct procedures and with Public Health Wales for the development of
workshops on the topic. The post also outlined their achievements, such as a commitment from the University for mandatory consent training as a part of student induction from 2026/2027.

Time to Act responded to this apology on Instagram, saying “Cardiff SU stepped it up, now it’s Cardiff University’s turn”. Time to Act is proposing a third AGM motion, representing students and aiming to tackle sexual violence. If this is a matter you feel strongly about, please show your support by voting on Thursday 20 November 2025.

An apology, recognition for survivors and the new proposed actions are a great start from the Students’ Union but more still needs to be done, and it is up to us as students to push for the University to make changes.