Following the revelations from last year’s Broderick review into sexual assault on campus, the assembled of college boys across the University of Sydney have pledged to try really, really, really hard not to rape anyone at this year’s O Week.
“We’re going to try our best,” said St. Andrews Senior Student Tipp Richdad. “When we saw the results of the review last year we were like, man, that looks really bad for us. So, this year, we’re going to try super hard to respect the bodily autonomy of other students on campus and not rape them. But like, we’ll see. You know?”
Despite the incredible headway these students are making to not rape other students, they are still fallible. As such, they have designed a contingency plan for if they fail to meet the difficult 2018 target of zero rapes. “If something goes wrong and one of us does rape someone, we’ve all taken a secondary pledge that says we will definitely not talk about it. It’s so important to us that our fellow students – and prospective employers – view us as people who try not to rape people, and it would be so rough if we damaged our new reputation by revealing that we actually had raped people.”
The University of Sydney have thrown their full support behind the initiative, revealing in a statement, “This is an important step in the history of our colleges and it comes with a unique set of challenges. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and we can’t expect the grown men on our campus to start not raping people overnight. As such, we will be providing additional financial aid to the colleges to help these men reach their full potential as students who do not, or at least appear to not, rape other students.”
When asked if any of those funds would go towards supporting the survivors of sexual assault, the uni said, “there just isn’t any money left to go around, but we want you all to know that we’re trying really, really, really hard to find some.”