Last month, the University released its inaugural Annual Report on Sexual Misconduct for 2022. The Report evaluated initiatives to address sexual misconduct on campus, outlined complaints handling processes and statistical data on reports made in 2022, and identified the University’s priorities going into the 2023 academic year.
The Report’s primary revelation is that there were 121 reports of sexual assault or harassment made to the University in 2022, 55 of which (approximately 45%) were university-related. Misconduct penalties were applied to respondents in only 3 cases. In a University community of almost 80,000 people in 2022, the report reflects the 2021 National Student Safety Survey’s (NSSS) findings: there is a severe under-reporting of sexual violence at universities across Australia. The NSSS found that one in six students experienced sexual harassment during their time at University – meaning that there are an estimated 13,333 cases at USyd each year.
While an increase in reporting alone won’t bring about the end of sexual violence on university campuses, it is critical that students know how to make a report and what support services are available to them. Addressing some of the underlying structural barriers that prevent students from reporting would also effectively prevent sexual assault and harassment from happening in the first place.
Students don’t report their experiences for a complex variety of reasons: some can be addressed by redesigning and spreading awareness of reporting mechanisms. Others require substantial reforms in other areas of institutional policy. A student on a professional placement might not come forward about harassment, knowing that they can be let go without reason. A college student might not come forward, knowing their perpetrator could be protected by institutional and family connections. Housing security, financial welfare, academic policy, and access to mental health support are inseparable from the conversation around fighting sexual assault on campus.
The University’s 2023 aim of making the reporting process more visible, more accessible, and easier to instantiate is undeniably a positive one. As revealed in the NSSS, 53.6% of surveyed students knew nothing, or very little, about formal sexual assault report or complaint processes within their university. Twenty-three per cent of students were not at all or only slightly confident in their university’s reporting processes.
The Report also listed as a priority increased participation in the International Students’ Sexual and Intimate Partner Violence Experiences Study (INVEST). INVEST is one of only two programs aimed at international students, the other being the Sexual Health and Peer Education (SHAPE) piloted in 2022. One of the Report’s most alarming figures was that out of the 107 current students who reported an incident of sexual harassment or assault, 45 were international students. This betrays the inadequacy of support systems and resources available for LOTE international students, who are among the most at-risk members of the University community.
The ongoing campaign to dismantle the University’s residential colleges has been a critical frontier for feminist activists on campus for good reason. Guided by the 2018 Red Zone report released by End Rape on Campus, the campaign pierces the colleges’ sandstone facade to call out cultures of structural misogyny, hazing, and class privilege. As such, the campaign makes the critical connection between student accommodation and sexual violence, a connection that the University has attempted to address only through consent workshops. Any acknowledgment of this connection is absent in the University’s agenda.
Despite the University’s commitment to publishing a report on sexual misconduct annually, much more needs to be done to secure a safer future for students. Meaningful improvement can only be achieved through substantial changes to the entire tertiary education sector, from the expansion of safe and affordable housing to reforms around professional placements and the working conditions of casual staff and HDR students.
In July of this year, End Rape on Campus released an open letter to the Albanese government highlighting the need for an independent body to address sexual violence within Australian universities and to regulate institutional responses. The letter, to which the National Union of Students and the Sydney University SRC are signatories, calls for an oversight and accountability mechanism that must “be independent of universities and residences; be led by experts in sexual violence who can assess the quality of university approaches; have authority to compel institutional transparency around incidences and responses; and be able to implement meaningful sanctions where basic standards are not met”.
On a campus level, underpinning the Report’s findings is the reality that the University of Sydney is unwilling to pursue the reforms that would most effectively address sexual violence. The most vulnerable members of the university community are continuing to fall through the cracks as a result. The Report’s figures, from chronic under-reporting to the over-representation of international students, don’t come as a surprise to student organisers. The Report provides nothing novel to analyse; there are no new proposals that have not long been championed by advocates at USyd and beyond.
