Nobody Is Listening To The University Students Speaking Out About Sexual Violence On Campus

I attended my first protest against sexual violence just after I began university.

It was 2017 and the Australian Human Rights Commission had just released the Change the Course Report, over 250 pages detailing the prevalence of sexual assault and harassment at Australian universities in 2015 and 2016. Of the 30,000+ students who responded, 1 in 5 students were sexually harassed in a university setting, and 1.6% had been sexually assaulted in a university setting, including travel to and from campus.

I heard the stories of the students who had been fighting long before I was born, watched as some had to leave because they were too overwhelmed, reminded of their own assaults.

In less than a year, End Rape on Campus Australia published the Red Zone Report, describing the culture of sexualised and gendered violence in colleges, and the hazing rituals that take place during O weeks. It describes instances of male students masturbating into bathroom products left in the showers by female students so that when they were later used, women would be washing themselves with a mixture of the product and semen; yearbook quotes saying “consent is nothing” and “I’d rather choke her to sleep than talk her to sleep”; male students being awarded “Animal Act of the Year” after gang raping a Women’s College student.   

At the age of 20, I knew both of these reports inside and out. I could recite national statistics and the data specific to my university at the drop of a hat. I knew the current and planned policies for reporting and addressing sexual violence, had organised rallies and meetings with the Vice Chancellor of my university, spoken at protests, and skipped class to attend the launches of new policies and programs designed to tackle sexual violence. When I look back on my time at university, I won’t remember the parties or dragging myself to early morning lectures. I’ll remember handling disclosures while I ate breakfast, the fear I felt knowing that the abusers in my college knew where I slept, and all the times I was let down by the people in power who should have been keeping me safe.

After two years of constant advocacy, I became severely burnt out to the point where I couldn’t eat or sleep. I went to hospital for two weeks and had to take a semester off of uni. Almost two years later and I’m still recovering from this, still dealing with vicarious trauma I should have never received.

My story is not an exceptional one. For decades, students across Australia been advocating for more action on sexual violence. For the most part, they’ve been left to fend for themselves.

Jasmine Noud was the president of the Macquarie Women’s Collective between 2016 and 2017. She was barely out of her teens and held no qualifications but was thrust into a position of huge responsibility.

“I was the first responder to dozens of disclosures of assault and harassment, on campus and at campus-related events. Despite reaching out numerous times, I received no assistance from the university in seeking support and justice for the people who experienced this, and also no personal support with the vicarious trauma that I was facing from the waves of traumatic and heartbreaking stories I was being told.”

For her advocacy, Noud received multiple threats of violence from men on the campus. Fake porn images were made in her likeness and shared on university meme pages, she was verbally abused to the extent that she stopped going to campus, and as a Lebanese woman of colour, the violence was racialised as well as sexualised, with the word terrorist being used against her.

“The vitriol and threats became so intense that I approached the University, fearful for my safety. A member of the campus security team met with me once, noted my concerns, and assured me they would be followed up. I never heard from the University again.”

Noud ended up leaving Macquarie. It just wasn’t a safe place for her anymore.

Rosie Ryan, Women’s Officer for the University of Sydney in 2010, shared similar stories of institutional neglect and apathy.

“The rape culture in these elite institutions was such that not only were they left to their own devices with little oversight by the uni — alleged perpetrators were protected and sometimes revered,” she said. “You could see this when an alleged rapist was given an award by his peers for ‘most animal act’, and old boys networks and current students would intervene to rally around alleged perpetrators and secure their continued place in college. The only thing that ever provoked any action was media coverage that threatened the reputation of the colleges. But even then there was no willingness to act on the kind of structural and cultural change needed.”

These are not isolated incidents. This is the norm for universities and colleges, and it has been that way for decades. Why have student survivors been ignored for so long? How many of us need to be raped for someone to care?

Advocacy group End Rape on Campus Australia was founded to provide direct support to students who have been impacted by sexual assault or sexual harassment within higher education communities, and to lobby at campus, state and federal levels to improve university responses to reports. Founder Sharna Bremner says that the biggest hurdle they’ve faced in making progress is the federal government.

“We met with Simon Birmingham when he was the Minister for Education and were working closely with his office on establishing a federal taskforce that would help to ensure that universities were meeting their legislated obligation to ensure that students have a safe learning environment. Then the cabinet shuffle happened in 2018 and Dan Tehan became the Minister.” Bremner recalls.

Tehan spoke with noted  “fake rape crisis” commentator Bettina Arndt about the taskforce, but snubbed EROC on multiple occasions. The taskforce, which had been ready for announcement by Birmingham, was shelved.

“It’s been frustrating to see student voices ignored in recent discussions about sexual violence, especially since student activists have been a group that’s been consistently fighting this fight.” Said Bremner. “I’ve heard people talking about the recent allegations in parliament as Australia’s ‘MeToo Moment’. Australia’s had plenty of ‘MeToo Moments’ before — it’s just that broader society decided it didn’t want to listen.”

Universities are microcosms of Australian society.

Some of the most powerful people in the country attended these institutions and bring the values enforced there with them through their lives. It’s not a coincidence that most of Morrison’s cabinet attended prestigious universities, colleges, and private schools. Think of people like Porter, Dyson, and the staffer who raped Brittany Higgins.

When we ignore sexual violence in universities and allow perpetrators to go unchecked, it’s no wonder people are being raped and assaulted in Parliament.

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Lydia Jupp is a freelance journalist who writes about gender, queerness, culture, and politics. You can find more of her work and an abundance of youthful existential crises over on her Twitter @lydiarosejupp.