Elsewhere in London, the NUS have been gathering evidence. Way back in 2010 they had been collecting data for the Hidden Marks report, the first ever nationwide investigation into women students’ experience of harassment, stalking, violence and sexual assault.It showed that while 7% of students had been subject to a serious sexual assault around the country, reporting levels were extremely low. Many said they felt ashamed or embarrassed; 43% thought they would be blamed for what had happened, and one in three thought they would not be believed A second report, which came out this year and was entitled That's what she said , sought to give voice specifically to survivors’ stories, and Susuana Amoah’s wide-ranging work on "lad culture" led to the creation of the government task-force which may now overturn Zellick.“I think at first they sort of denied it – like ‘yeah NUS has got these figures but it doesn’t really happen on my campus,’” she said. “It has to get past the denial stage.”There’s also technological change, she adds: “Students were able to use social media anonymously or otherwise to talk about their experiences and it was no longer something institutions could sweep under the carpet.”After taking all this evidence on the Zellick guidelines, the task force earlier this year announced they would officially review them . Nicola Dandridge, the chair, said that, although the guidelines are not statutory, “there is a need for them to be refreshed to reflect the changes that have taken place over the last 22 years since the original guidelines were written .”Universities UK remain reticent about the outcome of the report until it’s generally released. They did say, however, that criticisms of Zellick were not raised much in advance of the creation of the taskforce, and that many in higher education institutions had not heard of them before that point.They also stressed that while the guidelines were never mandatory for universities to follow, they do remain partially relevant. They also reminded me that Graham Zellick himself still stands by his work If the guidelines are overturned, says Ghani, the challenge will be implementation. While a change in guidance will encourage universities to act – having trained people there to receive reports – awareness of this support, proper investigations and disciplinary measures will require funding: for the big universities it won’t be much of a burden, but the smaller and specialist colleges face an uphill struggle.As Elizabeth Ramey explained to me, the system isn’t necessarily fully functional, even with the right laws in place: “That's the battle being waged in the United States right now, it’s really to hold the universities to account for these federal provisions. But the law was on the books for decades, it has been on the books for decades – in the UK, it was just non-existent.“But that’s the nature of social change, is the incrementally pushing it forward. Because there is a sort of political moment, maybe, ideally, the UK could actually move faster on this than the U.S. has done. Perhaps optimistically this is an opportunity for the UK to really show that it understands these issues and takes them seriously and is going to be at the forefront of these issues globally. It’s an opportunity and it’s one I really hope the UK takes.”