A young woman has told of a terrifying sex attack on the grounds on Melbourne University.
During one of the nights that I was there, I was raped by one of the other first-year students.
Women living in dorms at Macquarie University
are terrified tonight after a student was the the victim of a nasty assault.
The university has now been accused of not providing adequate protection.
Sexual assault, harassment, rape.
It seems every semester we hear a new story of a new incident
from a university campus somewhere in Australia.
Almost 1 in 5 women over the age of 15 experience sexual violence
and women aged 18-24, and increasingly men in the same age bracket,
who are highly represented on university campuses,
are most vulnerable in those statistics.
So, just how dangerous are our campuses?
Today 39 universities and the Human Rights Commission launched a survery
to find out how widespread sexual harassment and assault is
at universities across the country.
We've been receiving reports, for a very long time,
about sexual assault.
They're extremely distressing, and they're not just campus pranks.
And what are some of the country's most respected institutions doing to address these attitudes towards women?
It's one in which universities are working with the community.
To make it very clear that there is zero tolerance.
This is only the beginning of a journey here, to address this issue.
A journey that many of the students The Feed spoke to today, is starting way too late.
I guess because it's been around for so long
It's so accepted. As much as it shouldn't be, but it is.
Even wit the on-campus living,
No one checks the rooms or anything like that. I think if they had more security
more like hotels do, then it would probably minimise the problem.
I mean the government probably find it difficult to target an issue like that
just because it is quite common, and then a lot of people just don't want to speak about it.
Student bodies around the country say the problem is rampant,
with a recent survey of their own finding at least
72% of students have experienced some form of sexual harassment on campus,
and 27% have been sexually assaulted.
Well at the moment the data is quite patchy,
and we see a lot of anecdotal information coming forward.
Just yesterday, womens' student officers from the past ten years
from Australia's oldest and most respected instiution,
The Unversity of Sydney, penned this open letter
demanding action on sexual assault on campus.
What has not changed, since I was Women's Officer at UTS,
and in fact, I was stalked at university,
and when we had our sexual harassment campaign I got
a got a phone call in the middle of the night threatening to rape me.
Last week a Facebook page packed with photos of sexy behaviour on campus,
students at Macquarie University were running was exposed.
And last month five ANU students accused of sexual harassment
were expelled, and two others suspended.
I think universities are moving in the right direction,
Are they doing enough? No.
But they're all working towards improvement.
A sample of students selected from each of the 39 unis involved
will be surveyed.
But if you're not in that sample, or you've got a story to tell,
or you want to be heard, you can jump online
and make a confidential submission via the Australian Human Rights Commission website right now.
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