The Australian Human Rights Commission’s report into sexual violence on Australian university campuses released on Tuesday puts a number on sexual assault and harassment. Now, universities can work to reduce those numbers and gloat about it afterwards. There is some merit in that.
The report makes nine recommendations for Australian universities to implement to make campuses safer for students. One of those recommendations is a review into the capacity and ability of university counselling services to assist survivors of sexual assault. It calls on universities to expand on the quality and quantity of on-campus counselling services available to students. I could not be happier that there is finally an official recommendation made to this end.
At the University of Sydney, both staff and students have advocated for most support to be outsourced to Rape and Domestic Violence Services Australia (RDVSA), also known as the Rape Crisis Centre. This has been seen as a massive win for students. There is merit in that, too.
But a centre for rape victims is not the most accessible resource for international students and culturally and linguistically diverse (Cald) communities. When we learn the English language, nobody really teaches us the word “rape”, or what it means. It is a hard word to come to terms with. Diverse student representatives have raised this issue but it is a slightly harder agenda to push because it is not a relatable problem for the wider student and staff population.
For ongoing professional counselling, too, international students are more likely to access in-house support or support provided by their own community. Having RDVSA pick up the slack for universities is great. But it should not be a cop out of expanding and improving in-house counselling services. Campus counselling services should also be working with community organisations to refer international students and Cald students to their own community services, should that be more accessible for them.
Another neglected group so far has been postgraduate students experiencing unwanted behaviour from supervisors. The report puts some figures on it. University solutions need to be aimed specifically at the relationship between postgraduate students, their supervisors and university colleagues. These relationships are vastly different to the tutor/student relationship for undergraduate students.
A supervisor may be very influential in the work and career of their student, and therefore hold tremendous power over them. The relationship is also longer term and more one-on-one. 14% of postgraduates at the University of Sydney said that they did not make a report because they are from a culture where discussing these things makes them feel uncomfortable. Once again, this is of concern because almost 48% of the University of Sydney’s postgraduate population is international students.
To that extent, I am wary of how accurately the report represents the reality for international students and Cald communities. These are the communities that are less likely to opt into answering a survey on sexual assault. As a result of limited student representation, the particular needs of these students have occupied far less space in university discussions on tackling sexual assault. Among diverse student representatives, there is concern about the lack of response from universities targeted at Cald and religious communities. Natasha Chaudhary, women’s officer at the Sydney University Postgraduate Representative Association, says:
If universities want survivors to report cases or the cases to drop, they need to make a strong statement about the consequences of such acts. If I am told at my inductions, the university website and my first lecture that I should consider this space as safe and the university will take immediate and serious action on cases reported, I am more likely to report. It also sends a strong message to potential perpetrators. As students, we need universities to completely support us and work closely in building these systems that incorporate our needs.
We need all student groups to be a part of discussions aimed at tackling sexual assault, and we need solutions to be inclusive of all these groups too. Otherwise, universities will continue to fail a major cohort of their students.
