STUDENTS STAGE CLUBS BOYCOTT IN WAKE OF DRINK SPIKING FEARS
Action part of group’s national campaign
A GROUP of students will be boycotting nightclubs in North Staffordshire as part of a national campaign to raise awareness of spiked drinks.
The action on Wednesday next week will involve students from Keele and Staffordshire universities, who have set up their own branch of the Girls Night In movement.
Campaigners are calling for venues to do more to protect drinkers, including increased searches, CCTV covering bar areas, staff training and handing out free stoppers for bottles.
They also want better support for women who fall victim to spiking, and greater repercussions for perpetrators.
It follows cases in several other parts of the country where women have been injected on nights out. It can cause them to lower their inhibitions, feel confused and suffer memory loss.
The Girls Night In campaign said: “We deserve to have fun on our nights out. It’s not fair that our club experiences are being tainted by the fear, worry and anxiety that we’re going to be drugged.”
The new girlsnightin_keele_staffs group so far has around 350 Instagram followers.
The move comes as a separate petition on Parliament’s website is urging ministers to make it a legal requirement for nightclubs to ‘thoroughly search’ guests on entry. More than 800 residents in North
Staffordshire are among the 157,000 people to sign it.
Carl Gratty, below, owner of Gossip nightclub, in Hanley, said spiking hasn’t been an issue at his venue because of stringent checks.
He added: “Everybody is scanned in when they enter the building. Their ID is passed to a member of the door staff team. It’s validated and photographs are taken. We also do bag searches and random searches.”
Keele University Students’ Union has also stressed it has measures in place to keep drinkers safe.
These include offering free ‘spikeys’ to cover drinks, and training all bar staff to recognise the ‘ask Angela’ initiative, where anyone can ask for help using the Angela codeword. Students are also being urged to download the Safezone app, which gives them immediate access to campus security and a team of first responders.
Hannah Blackburn, president of Staffordshire University Students’ Union, said she shared the concerns of students. She added: “We work with the university to advise our students on how to stay safe during their induction and have our Be Safe awareness campaign running throughout the year.”
There are also random searches and drug tests at the LRV campus club, along with ‘union angels’ who walk students home if they feel unsafe.
A Staffordshire Police spokesman said: “We have not received any reports of spiking by injection in Staffordshire. As with all police forces, we are carrying out an assessment of drink spiking amid a rise in national reports. We take all reports seriously and we would encourage anyone who believes they have been a victim or witness to spiking, in any form, to contact us as quickly as possible.”