Explosive study exposes rooms for sex and cash at the University of KwaZulu-Natal campus residences

15 first-year female students in no holds barred recorded interviews with University of KwaZulu-Natal (UKZN) researchers, implicated senior students, including some members of the student representative council (SRC) and the institution's department of student residence affairs (DSRA), whom they accused of treating them like "fresh meat".They spoke of coercion, especially when transactional sexual relations were resisted, in the" Fresh Meat: First year female students negotiating sexual violence on campus residences" study, published last month in the South African Journal of Higher Education.The study was conducted pre-Covid-19 to determine how young women experience and negotiate gender, sexuality and violence on campus residences.Female students, past and present, who were not part of the study and spoke on condition of anonymity to the Sunday Times, this week told how they witnessed their peers being coerced, experienced insinuations of sex to guarantee accommodation at campus residences by "connected" seniors, and were fleeced out of thousands of rands in a bid to secure rooms.
A student, who will graduate in coming weeks, said she paid R4000 to a student who claimed he was connected to SRC members who would secure her a room on campus in her first year but made off with her money.