Harriet Smailes – Postgraduate Researcher
[Content warning: sexual violence – university and local support services: https://reportandsupport.le.ac.uk/support/category/resources]
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It has not been uncommon for universities to show their commitment to tackling sexual violence with a statement espousing their understanding of the seriousness of the matter. However, there has been significant doubt cast over these claims in previous years (see e.g., Independent Article). Even the repeated use of a statement that suggests how seriously a university takes sexual violence is problematic for a multitude of reasons (see blog post).
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The call for universities to improve their approaches to sexual violence/misconduct is not a new one. However, from a practical perspective, and using university time frames as our context, the shift expected from universities over the past ~eight years has been astronomical.
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To provide somewhat of a potted history: pre-2016, universities were mostly following Zellick guidelines implemented in 1994. These guidelines effectively instructed universities to stay away from cases which could be considered criminal offences, with sexual misconduct sitting front and centre of this recommendation. Fast forward to 2016, and – almost overnight – Universities UK were telling institutions they must now be getting involved, and effectively responding to behaviours which may constitute a criminal offence, particularly in the relation to university disciplinary proceedings.
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To go from ‘stay away’ to, ‘you must now be able to properly investigate and make decisions on the balance of probability around behaviour which, in a different context, would be considered rape and processed through a court of law, potentially resulting in life imprisonment’, is quite considerable. Fast forward again to 2022, and the Office for Students (English university regulator) is now saying that universities should not just have an effective approach to sexual misconduct, encompassing elements of prevention and response interventions, they must be doing this work, or risk losing their registration as an English university (and the awarding power and tuition fee standards that come with it).
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In the UK, estimates of the prevalence of sexual violence/misconduct in universities have fairly consistently remained around the 68% / 62% / 62% mark for over a decade. That is, keeping in mind caveats around the representativeness of any statistic, around two-thirds of students are thought to be subjected to sexual violence/misconduct at university. In fact, students are around three times more likely to be subjected to sexual violence than any other occupation group.
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Sexual misconduct at university can have significant university-related impacts on victim/survivors, including losing funding opportunities or academic advancement, or having to leave the institution or course of study altogether. However, those who disclose or report sexual misconduct to their institution may be impacted even further by a response which is gender biased, unsupportive, not joined-up, or victim-blaming. In fact, inappropriate institutional responses to sexual violence disclosures and reports can cause a higher level of trauma to be experienced by the victim/survivors than can be accounted for by the violence or abuse itself, with additional impacts including higher levels of anxiety and dissociation.
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Nowadays, universities generally aren’t just sitting back and watching these cases roll in – universities have spent between tens of thousands and millions of pounds on their response to sexual misconduct over the past five years. But, as shown by those figures, there is such variation in response across the sector and the general conversation around this subject still remains that universities should be doing better.
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Whether or not individual universities choose to seek out progress around the topic of sexual violence is becoming irrelevant as more sector policy and expectation is being brought in, in a way that will inevitably impact on the response to victim/survivors. Conversations around universities’ Duty of Care towards their students has been closely intertwined with a spotlight on university sexual misconduct approaches (see e.g., Association of Heads of University Administration, AHUA), and High Court judgements governing university disciplinary procedures require institutions to be making continual adjustments to their processes, again, with a focus on sexual misconduct (see e.g., the case of AB V XYZ).
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This is all to say – although it’s not particularly ground-breaking – universities must continue to care about their approach to sexual violence. They should care because their regulator requires them to, sector guidance and expectation requires them to, student mental health and wellbeing requires them to, and because it’s just the right thing to do. Caring on its own is of course not enough, but this will most likely, in turn, lead to the appropriate resourcing, senior leadership buy-in, and a commitment to development that is required to truly take sexual violence at university seriously.
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