Universities are spending more time than ever thinking about belonging, wellbeing, continuation, and the wider student experience.
That’s understandable. Financial pressures are intensifying, student expectations are shifting, and regulators are asking tougher questions about student outcomes, safety, and institutional culture.
But amidst this focus on lectures, support services and academic outcomes, some of the most influential parts of university life happen elsewhere. They happen in sports clubs, societies, social spaces and peer groups – the places where students build identity, friendship, and community.
And most of the time, that experience is hugely positive.
At British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS), our member and student data consistently shows the value of participation. More than 90% of students surveyed said taking part in BUCS sport supported their mental wellbeing. Nearly half said being part of a sports club helped them stay at university. Students repeatedly tell us that sport gives them friendship, confidence, routine, leadership skills, and a sense of belonging to their institution.
For universities thinking about continuation, inclusion, and student success, those outcomes matter. And as CEO of BUCS, I see those positives every day.
But there is another side to the conversation that we have to start talking about more. A side that simply isn’t ok.
Enough is enough
Alongside the many positive experiences student clubs create, harmful behaviours including bullying, harassment, sexual misconduct, and dangerous initiations continue to persist across parts of student life. These behaviours are not unique to sport, nor are they created by universities alone. They reflect wider cultural issues across society, education, and sport more broadly.
But higher education and sport are settings where they can be amplified.
Universities bring together thousands of students at a moment of transition into adulthood. Students are forming new identities, seeking belonging and navigating new freedoms and social pressures, often within environments built around strong group identity and traditions. In some cases, unhealthy behaviours become normalised, excused as “banter,” or protected as part of club culture.
That creates a difficult tension for institutions.
The same clubs, teams and communities that can have an enormously positive impact on wellbeing and belonging can also become spaces where some students feel excluded, unsafe, or pressured into behaviours they are uncomfortable with. For every student who finds community through a club or team, there may be another who quietly walks away from participation altogether.
That matters because this is no longer simply a student discipline issue. It becomes a student experience issue, a safeguarding issue, and a regulatory issue.
Club culture
The direction of travel across higher education is clear. The Office for Students has placed growing emphasis on harassment, sexual misconduct, student protection, and institutional responsibility. Universities are rightly being challenged to think not only about formal policies, but about the lived reality of student culture on campus.
At the same time, students themselves increasingly expect universities to provide environments that are inclusive, respectful and safe. They want the community, friendship, and identity that student sport and societies can offer, but without the harmful behaviours that too often sit alongside them.
This is why club culture cannot be treated as a niche issue. Initiations and related behaviours do not begin or end in higher education. They exist across wider social, educational and sporting cultures, but can become particularly amplified within parts of the higher education sporting environment.
For this reason, university sport leaders cannot be expected to solve what is a deeply ingrained culture matter themselves. There is no simple solution.
A sector response
It’s an issue that cuts across student services, students’ unions, safeguarding teams, academic leadership, sport, accommodation and institutional culture itself. It’s also a system issue that reaches beyond higher education into schools, community sport, and wider social norms around power, often rooted in versions of masculinity, alcohol, and belonging.
No single organisation can solve that alone, and there is no single action plan that resolves deeply rooted cultural issues overnight.
That’s why BUCS is convening its upcoming Club Culture Summit in June – not as a standalone conversation, but as part of a broader sector response focused on confronting the issue openly and ensuring it remains a live and active priority across the sector.
The summit will bring together voices from higher education, sport, schools, mental health charities, safeguarding and policy to explore how we collectively create healthier and safer student cultures through sport.
Importantly, the focus is not simply on identifying problems. Higher education already understands the seriousness of the issue. The challenge is what happens next.
We’ll be asking how do we create greater consistency in expectations? How do we support students to speak up safely? How do we better share learning between institutions? How do we challenge harmful behaviours earlier, before students arrive at university? And how do we preserve everything positive about student clubs and sport while being clearer about the behaviours that have no place within them?
At the summit, BUCS will work with partners and members to explore a sector-wide Club Culture Framework focused on openness, education, accountability, and collaboration. That includes consideration of annual reporting, stronger mechanisms for raising concerns, clearer guidance and expectations, and deeper partnership working across safeguarding, mental health, and sport.
None of this is about undermining student leadership, tradition or community. In fact, protecting the positive impact of student clubs depends on being prepared to confront the behaviours that damage trust, safety and participation.
The overwhelming majority of students involved in sport and societies contribute positively to university life every day. The aim is not to stigmatise student communities, but to support them to thrive.
This conversation is bigger than sport, it’s about what kind of cultures universities want students to experience, what behaviours institutions are prepared to challenge, and how higher education creates environments where every student feels able to belong safely.
Culture will be shaped one way or another. The question is whether we choose to shape it intentionally.
