Exclusive: report by Australian Human Rights Centre sets out pathway for universities to develop better responses to sexual assault and harassment
University responses to reports of sexual assault and harassment on their campuses have been “ad hoc,” reactive, and designed without meaningful engagement with students and survivors, a report by the Australian Human Rights Centre.
The report, provided to Guardian Australia ahead of its release on Thursday, said that students and survivors must be at the centre of policies around sexual assault if those policies are to have any impact.
It was commissioned by The Hunting Ground Australia Project in conjunction with the national student survey by the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), which was released on Tuesday. The two reports are designed to be read together, with one providing “disconcerting evidence” of the prevalence of sexual violence at Australian universities and the lack of adequate policy responses and the other setting out a good practice guide for universities to follow.
Lead author Prof Andrea Durbach said changing the culture in both university leadership and the student body was key to reducing the prevalence of sexual violence, and that would not happen without both clear leadership and “genuine sustained student engagement.”
“Not just lip service,” she told Guardian Australia. “You can have the best practice policies in the world, but if you don’t have an environment or culture that supports or enforces those policies to be properly implemented, then they won’t have any value.”
The report, titled On Safe Ground: A Good Practice Guide for Australian Universities, made 18 recommendations, including developing policies for responding to sexual assault and harassment that clearly define the conduct that constitutes sexual assault or harassment and includes a “prominent statement of express prohibition.”
It also recommended establishing formal student advisory mechanisms to establish substantive student engagement; establishing integrated sexual violence support services on campus where doctors, counsellors, and sexual violence case workers are co-located; and establishing a national taskforce to implement the recommendations of both the On Safe Ground report and AHRC survey.
Some recommendations, like providing evidence-based sexual violence prevention education programs, are also recommended in the 10-point plan announced by Universities Australia on Tuesday in anticipation of the AHRC report. Universities Australia is the peak body for Australia’s 39 universities and provided $1m in funding for the survey, a partnership that was criticised by some advocates as undermining the independence of the research.
Durbach said she did not think the survey data was compromised, but she said that the next national student survey, which AHRC recommended take place in three years, would benefit from being wholly independent so students don’t “feel conflicted about it.”
“The most important thing I have learned from this process is that if you do seek to control how things get received you start to lose your integrity,” she said.
Durbach has been pushing to conduct this review since 2011, when the AHRC released a damning report into gendered violence at the Australian Defence Force Academy. One of the recommendations of that report was to expand the investigation out to universities and other institutions. It gathered speed in 2015 with the release of The Hunting Ground film about campus sexual assault in the United States.
She did not find any evidence of the kind of cover-ups seen in colleges in the United States, saying: “I think if anything we have instances of incompetence or ineptness.”
But some features of the issue in the US, such as a culture or traditions that look the other way at behaviours that are conducive to high rates of sexual assault or harassment, are present. That’s particularly the case at residential colleges, which were singled out in the AHRC report as being particularly high risk.
The AHRC report detailed incidents at residential colleges like female students being made to take their top off on the dance floor when a certain song came on, and first year female students being pressured to “run the gauntlet” by accepting drinks from a line of males who have hooked the spout of a wine cask in their fly.
“I think what concerns me is the extent to which some of these practices may be protected or may even be seen as acceptable because somehow they are seen as part of what’s seen as, in inverted commas, ‘university life’,” Durbach said. “But ‘university life’ has shifted considerably in the past few decades and some of these traditions have not.”
The report also recommended residential colleges ensure that they have rooms available at short notice so victims and perpetrators of sexual assault who live in close proximity to each other can be separated, and recommends reviewing the pricing and availability of alcohol to minimise the potential for harmful behaviour.
Friends, if you like this post kindly comment below and do share your responds Thanks for reading
University responses to reports of sexual assault and harassment on their campuses have been “ad hoc,” reactive, and designed without meaningful engagement with students and survivors, a report by the Australian Human Rights Centre.
The report, provided to Guardian Australia ahead of its release on Thursday, said that students and survivors must be at the centre of policies around sexual assault if those policies are to have any impact.
It was commissioned by The Hunting Ground Australia Project in conjunction with the national student survey by the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC), which was released on Tuesday. The two reports are designed to be read together, with one providing “disconcerting evidence” of the prevalence of sexual violence at Australian universities and the lack of adequate policy responses and the other setting out a good practice guide for universities to follow.
Lead author Prof Andrea Durbach said changing the culture in both university leadership and the student body was key to reducing the prevalence of sexual violence, and that would not happen without both clear leadership and “genuine sustained student engagement.”
“Not just lip service,” she told Guardian Australia. “You can have the best practice policies in the world, but if you don’t have an environment or culture that supports or enforces those policies to be properly implemented, then they won’t have any value.”
The report, titled On Safe Ground: A Good Practice Guide for Australian Universities, made 18 recommendations, including developing policies for responding to sexual assault and harassment that clearly define the conduct that constitutes sexual assault or harassment and includes a “prominent statement of express prohibition.”
It also recommended establishing formal student advisory mechanisms to establish substantive student engagement; establishing integrated sexual violence support services on campus where doctors, counsellors, and sexual violence case workers are co-located; and establishing a national taskforce to implement the recommendations of both the On Safe Ground report and AHRC survey.
Some recommendations, like providing evidence-based sexual violence prevention education programs, are also recommended in the 10-point plan announced by Universities Australia on Tuesday in anticipation of the AHRC report. Universities Australia is the peak body for Australia’s 39 universities and provided $1m in funding for the survey, a partnership that was criticised by some advocates as undermining the independence of the research.
Durbach said she did not think the survey data was compromised, but she said that the next national student survey, which AHRC recommended take place in three years, would benefit from being wholly independent so students don’t “feel conflicted about it.”
“The most important thing I have learned from this process is that if you do seek to control how things get received you start to lose your integrity,” she said.
Durbach has been pushing to conduct this review since 2011, when the AHRC released a damning report into gendered violence at the Australian Defence Force Academy. One of the recommendations of that report was to expand the investigation out to universities and other institutions. It gathered speed in 2015 with the release of The Hunting Ground film about campus sexual assault in the United States.
She did not find any evidence of the kind of cover-ups seen in colleges in the United States, saying: “I think if anything we have instances of incompetence or ineptness.”
But some features of the issue in the US, such as a culture or traditions that look the other way at behaviours that are conducive to high rates of sexual assault or harassment, are present. That’s particularly the case at residential colleges, which were singled out in the AHRC report as being particularly high risk.
The AHRC report detailed incidents at residential colleges like female students being made to take their top off on the dance floor when a certain song came on, and first year female students being pressured to “run the gauntlet” by accepting drinks from a line of males who have hooked the spout of a wine cask in their fly.
“I think what concerns me is the extent to which some of these practices may be protected or may even be seen as acceptable because somehow they are seen as part of what’s seen as, in inverted commas, ‘university life’,” Durbach said. “But ‘university life’ has shifted considerably in the past few decades and some of these traditions have not.”
The report also recommended residential colleges ensure that they have rooms available at short notice so victims and perpetrators of sexual assault who live in close proximity to each other can be separated, and recommends reviewing the pricing and availability of alcohol to minimise the potential for harmful behaviour.
Friends, if you like this post kindly comment below and do share your responds Thanks for reading
No comments:
Post a Comment