ARTWORK: Beth O’Sullivan
national student safety survey reveals continued higher rates of sexual violence at anu than national average FIONA BALLENTINE, ROXANA SADEGHPOUR AND JULIETTE BAXTER CW: Discussion of SASH and institutional betrayal. On Wednesday March 23rd, Universities Australia (UA) released the results of the 2021 National Student Safety Survey (NSSS) investigating the incidence of sexual harassment and sexual assault at universities across Australia. Like in previous surveys, students at ANU have experienced sexual assault and harassment at much higher levels than average. This comes two days after ANU announced a new Student Safety and Wellbeing Report on Monday 21 March, promising to spend millions on additional staffing and consent education. Run by independent body Social Research Centre (SRC), the NSSS is a follow up to a 2017 survey, which ranked the ANU as worst in Australia for instances of sexual harassment and second-worst for incidents of sexual assault. The NSSS identified as examples of incidents of sexual harassment and sexual assault in the University context. This includes catcalling, receiving sexualised comments or sexist commentary, being inappropriately touched, groped, ‘up-skirted,’ stalked, kissed without permission, and being sexually assaulted. Moreover, as the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic necessitated many Universities to rearrange to remote, online learning, the NSSS noted an increase in sexual harassment online. The Report’s Findings of Prevalence at the ANU As for the ANU, a higher percentage of ANU students experienced sexual harassment and sexual assault since starting University and in the previous 12 months than the national average, and a higher percentage of the most impactful incidents at ANU occur at student accommodation and residences than the national average. In a Facebook post, the ANU Women’s Department pointed out that at the ANU, 26 percent of respondents reported being sexually harassed at some point during their time at University (twice the national average), and 12.3 percent reported being sexually assaulted at some point during their time at University (i.e., three times the national average).
ANU’s Response to the Report On Wednesday 23rd March in an email, circulated to all ANU students and staff, Vice-Chancellor Brian Schmidt stated the ANU “is stepping up, not sweeping this challenge aside,” and these results are the reasoning behind the ANU Student Safety and Wellbeing Plan announcement. According to his email, the University will further embed a zero-tolerance approach in ANU culture with a commitment to invest at least $3.3 million every year. An ANU spokesperson clarified that this money would be spent on “an additional 14 specialist staff working in student residences,” as well as “three case managers in the last six months” with the intention to “double that initially.” The University added that they “consulted students for 12 months on the Student Safety and Wellbeing Plan” and is “committed to consulting with its entire community, including student leaders, advocates and survivors, to finalise what each major initiative will look like” to commence “as soon as possible.” Student Response to the Report Schmidt’s email and announcement of the ANU Safety and Wellbeing Survey has received backlash from student advocates. The ANU Women’s Officer, Avan Daruwalla, stated that the survey reveals that “ students at ANU face a much higher risk of sexual assault and harassment than at almost any other university” and condemned it as “an appalling and unacceptable failure by Australia’s national university.” Daruwalla continued, “Every incident of sexual assault and harassment documented represents the trauma and unsafety of a student survivor.” She concluded, “the institutional betrayal at ANU is underscored by the fact that student advocates have been campaigning for specific, actionable and immediate actions to redress a dangerous and unresponsive culture – to no avail for the past five years.”
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