STUDENTS at the University of Bradford are taking part in a national scheme to tackle potentially harmful "lad culture" on UK campuses.

Its student union is working with the national union and eight other universities to deal with ways of thinking that normalise sexual harassment, homophobia and misogyny, often dismissing it as "banter".

The National Union of Students has released an audit of universities around the country, its most comprehensive analysis of lad culture policy and practice undertaken to date.

It found that although many universities had policies to educate students about such behaviour, more needed to be done to define what is and isn't acceptable on campus.

The University of Bradford will now be involved in a year-long pilot to build policies that will be shared nationwide in an effort to tackle sexual harassment and bullying on campus.

The audit said: "Women define lad culture primarily as a group or pack mentality residing in activities such as sport, heavy alcohol consumption and ‘banter’ which was often sexist, misogynistic, or homophobic."

Bradford Student's Union is no stranger to confronting the issue head on.

In 2013 the union voted to ban The Sun and The Star after members agreed the national newspapers objectified women. Hit pop song Blurred Lines by Robin Thicke was banned from campus radio for the same reason.

And the union has held protests on campus and the city centre against the regular sexual harassment and unwanted attention many female students are subject to while travelling to university.

Samayya Afzal, women's and campaigns officer at University of Bradford Union of Students, said: “Social justice and equality underpins everything we do at Bradford Students Union, and we’re delighted to have been chosen as a union for the NUS Lad Culture Pilot Scheme.

“We appreciate this opportunity to work with NUS and our students to create an atmosphere where lad culture can be critically and effectively challenged. The audit we took part in was incredibly helpful in highlighting the areas we’ve been doing well in, but also where we can do much better. We’re looking forward to a great year.”

Susuana Amoah, NUS women’s officer, said: "This work will be challenging at times but we believe it is possible to make real educational change. NUS will be working closely with UBU to identify what its unique issues are and how we can best support their local strategy for tackling lad culture on campus.

“We want to offer support, encouragement and resources to move this work forward on the ground, whilst building our knowledge and understanding of what this issue looks like in different places.

It will allow us to create and develop resources that will be relevant and useful to all students’ unions.”

Other universities taking part are Cardiff University, Kings College London, Leeds University, LSE, Queen Mary’s University London, Oxford University, University of Sussex and University of Warwick.