How does your university handle sexual assault?

Only 15 out of 39 Australian universities have up-to-date strategies to overcome issues of sexual assault and harassment on campus, an Australian Human Rights Institute (AHRI) report has found.

The ARHI investigated each individual Australian university's policies and practices in relation to sexual violence on campus, and collated it into one document.

It draws on resources and links from each of the 39 universities' websites, as well as their sexual violence policies, reports and data, to highlight the need for more transparent data reporting.

A lack of student knowledge about reporting processes has been regarded as one of the biggest issues exacerbating the effects of sexual violence on campus, increasing confusion and stigma for students trying to seek help.

The AHRI report outlines what percentage of students had adequate knowledge about making complaints and seeking support, as well as what resources each university has made available, and when.

Across the board, the AHRI found about half of students knew nothing or very little about either.

Only three of all 39 universities, who all participated in the NSSS survey, made its reports including data of campus sexual violence, and the university's response to it, publicly available.

A third of universities don't have internal task forces or advisory committees ensuring they are tackling the issue.

It also found although nearly all universities now have their own stand-alone policies on sexual violence, which previous to the 2017 Change the Course Report and the 2021 National Student Safety Survey, wasn't the case, terms defining what sexual violence or misconduct actually is varies between institutions.

A lack of coherence across the sector in terms of reporting procedures and the definition of terms has exacerbated the campus sexual violence issue.

Universities are self-regulating, stand alone institutions, which has made tackling this issue difficult, said AHRI research fellow Dr Allison Henry.

"Throughout 2023 we were repeatedly asked by members of the University Accord, parliamentarians and student leaders about which universities were ‘doing well’ in responding to campus sexual violence," Dr Henry said.

"Providing a full national picture has been very difficult. While many of Australia’s universities have taken concerted action to tackle sexual violence over recent years, the national higher education regulator, [ [the Tertiary Education Quality Standards Authority {TEQSA)], has not undertaken any systemic oversight of these efforts since July 2020.” 

Shocking numbers of sexual assault and sexual harassment occurring on university campuses were found in both the report and survey, prompting sector-wide discussion throughout the Universities Accord review process.

The Accord interim report saw peak bodies and higher education stakeholders consulted to produce a draft Action Plan addressing gender based violence in higher education document.

The final Action Plan was released last Friday, and follows the seven reform points outlined in the draft Action Plan.

Both reports found broken reporting processes, where students didn't know how to report or if their claims would be taken seriously, were rife throughout universities and a major barrier to appropriately handling the common assault and harassment events.

"Universities are regulated and funded at a federal level, but they're actually set up under state and territory legislation," Dr Henry said. 

"And underneath that ... all universities are independent, self-regulating autonomous bodies."

A culmination of these factors enabled a lack of accountability from authority bodies like TEQSA in sexual violence data collection and reporting mechanisms, and resulted in confusing processes for students.

"You can go to each of the 39 university websites and they call [sexual assault and harassment] different things. They have different disclosure or reporting mechanisms," Dr Henry said.

"Some of them have online forms, some of them have an email address, some of them have 1-800 number."

The Action Plan recommends the following reforms:

1. Establish a National Student Ombudsman
2. Higher education providers will embed a whole‑of‑organisation approach to prevent and respond to gender-based violence
3. Introduce a National Higher Education Code to Prevent and Respond to Gender-based Violence
4. Enhance the oversight and accountability of student accommodation providers
5. Identify opportunities to ensure legislation, regulation and policies can prioritise victim-survivor safety
6. Increase data transparency and scrutiny
7. Regular review of progress against the Action Plan

The student ombudsman and the National Code hope to offer the unified regulation the sector is missing, which would aim to improve accountability of each university, making them report and explain their procedures and data.

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