Nina Funnell

When that report came out, it got

international coverage like the New York Times, BBC, everybody picked it up.

It was sort of a watershed moment.

And while some of the universities that the spotlight was on retaliated, a lot of the ones that were maybe not necessarily the focus of the report actually saw the writing on the wall and read the tea leaves and went,

shivers, we actually now need to really do something about this on our own campuses.

So it actually did produce change, but not where I expected the change.

It was actually the ones who were under the spotlight became defensive.

And it's called siege mentality, where they sort of bunker down, they declare themselves the victim of the media.

If anything, for a period of time, the culture might even become even worse because they become so hyper defensive.

But it's actually the other universities and the other colleges around the country that were looking at this going... I don't want that to be me.

Exactly.

Exactly.

And that's actually where we saw the change.

I think they have to a degree, but I actually don't necessarily think, you know, I would love to take some credit, but I actually don't think it was anything to do with me.

I actually think that there was a series of things that have happened, one of which was actually COVID.

I think COVID was

a circuit breaker in because a lot of these traditions are handed down.

Yeah.

And when you have a circuit breaker like COVID where people aren't on campus for quite a long time, that was actually a massive interrupter in terms of that transition of really toxic cultural values.

Exactly.