Content Warning: Discussions of Sexual Assualt and Sexual Harassment (SASH) and Institutional Betrayal
On the first of August, the ANUSA Women’s Department held their annual protest against the ANU’s inaction on Sexual Assault and Sexual Harassment (SASH) on campus. Protestors marched from Kambri lawns to the Chancellery, demanding the ANU increase consent education and raise awareness on sexual violence on campus.
This year’s theme was “It Starts With Education. It Ends With Respect”, centring the conversation on consent education and its preventative nature.
The protest marks seven years since the Australian Human Rights Commission Change the Course report into sexual violence on University campuses. The Commission found one in five (21 percent) were sexually harassed in a university setting, excluding travel to and from university. ANU ranked first in the country for incidents of sexual harassment and second for sexual assault in 2017.
The protests come as part of the historic protests organised by the Women’s Department, and the Department’s continued efforts to raise awareness about the increase in sexual and/or gender-based violence on campus. As part of their Follow Through ANU 2022 report, the Department called the ANU to accept, respond, and implement six overarching recommendations based on student consultation.
These involve engaging with intersectional aspects of SASH, improving staff conditions, increasing transparency and accountability, clarifying reporting and support processes, and creating a system that accommodates survivors. The University was given until 1 August 2022 to respond to the recommendations, making the August first protests a direct response to ANU’s failure to adequately address these issues.
The University’s Sexual Violence Prevention Strategy, launced in 2019, aims to make the “ANU free from violence”. The strategy has three phases, with the third and current phase being, “Maintaining efforts and getting results”. The phase requires that “the social norms, attitudes, behaviours and systems contributing to violence will begin to shift.”
The University also anticipates that, “these behaviours will be more widely recognised and considered unacceptable, and will be more confidently challenged by peers, friends and colleagues, both in private and in public.”
“We expect that incidents of sexual violence and violence against women will start to decline. We will begin to reduce the load on crisis response services.”
However, this year’s protest outlined the shortcomings in the ANU’s consent education programs.
ANUSA Women’s Officer Lara Johnson (she/her) told Woroni, “Consent education is so key to our lives here at ANU.”
She explains, “That’s both what the ANU itself can provide to students through more comprehensive, intersectional consent education…but it’s also important that students take on board and do some thinking and introspection about the behaviours and attitudes that we allow to slide…that build up to those more incredibly harmful behaviours.”
The protest featured speakers including Deputy Women’s Officers Anna Denishensky (she/her) and Shalena Brito (she/her) and ANUSA General Secretary Milli McDonald (she/her). A large focus of the speeches was on the inadequacy of the consent education available on campus, with many criticisms directed toward the Rights, Respects and Relationships (RRR) modules.
Introduced in 2023, the RRR modules replaced the Consent Matters module. The new program aims to increase awareness surrounding sexual assault and sexual harassment (SASH), educate on the values and expectations of healthy relationships, and increase awareness of available support services.
The online module can be accessed anytime by students. It is compulsory, with an in-person component, for new students moving to on-campus residential halls.
However, one student at the protest told Woroni, “I found the online training was good as an introduction. But ultimately, there’s only so much you can get across online.”
“It might be hard to just take a solely online course when there’s no real support, or anyone to help you through that process.”
“And there are a lot of barriers which might make it hard to access, from straight up internet access, to if English is your second language. It might be hard to just take a solely online course when there’s no real support, there’s no one with you to help you through that process.”
They continue, “ I found the in person training wholly inadequate. Like it very much felt kind of piecemeal. It was a good start, but we could do a lot better.”
The 2022 National Student Safety Report revealed that the ANU still has the second highest prevalence of SASH in the country, and the problem which protestors pointed out, still persists.
“We need to have much more, the university really needs to listen to students about this.”
The ANU has made no public comment on this year’s protest.
If you or anyone you know is affected by the content of this piece, please contact one of the support services below:
ANU BIPOC Department
sa.bipoc@anu.edu.au
ANU Indigenous Department
sa.indigenous@anu.edu.au
ANU Counselling
(02) 6125 2442
1800 RESPECT
1800 737 732
ANU Women’s Department
sa.womens@anu.edu.au
ANU Queer* Department
sa.queer@anu.edu.au
Student Safety and Wellbeing Team
+61 2 6125 2211
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