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Findings from the 2021 National Student Safety Survey commissioned by Australian universities have been released today, including reports for individual institutions.
University of Queensland Vice-Chancellor Professor Deborah Terry thanked the 1255 UQ students who participated in September-October last year and today committed to acting on the outcomes.
“By showing the prevalence of sexual harassment and sexual assault, they have helped to hold up a mirror to where we are as a community on this societal problem,” Professor Terry said.
“To the survivors of sexual harassment and sexual assault, I am so very sorry that this happened to you. Any incident, quite clearly, is not acceptable for our community and we need to do better.
“Everyone has the right not only to feel safe - but to be safe - when they come to UQ, and we need to do more to make this happen.”
The findings show that in a university context in the past 12 months, 11 per cent of students at UQ had experienced sexual harassment and 1.6 per cent had experienced sexual assault.
For the period since starting university, the respective numbers were 19 per cent and 5 per cent respectively.
“While there has already been a lot of work done to improve our policies, training, campus security and support systems, the survey results compel us to acknowledge that we need to do more to prevent incidences from occurring and to make our University safe for everyone,” Professor Terry said.
Professor Terry said UQ’s response to the survey results would begin immediately with a thorough analysis of the data to understand what is not working and where we need to do better.
Areas that will be considered include:
- Education that directly addresses social norms that normalise and fuel sexual harassment and sexual assault
- Training for our staff, students and members of the UQ community on how to identify incidents, where to report them and how to support survivors
- Building awareness of and trust in our processes to encourage more students to seek support, and prioritising the safety and wellbeing of survivors through improved trauma-informed approaches.
This work would be done in partnership with student representative groups, survivor advocacy groups and key community stakeholders.
Professor Terry encouraged anyone who felt distressed or traumatised to contact support services, with details available on UQ’s Respect website.
The National Student Safety Survey (NSSS) was conducted online by the Social Research Centre with a representative sample of students and ran across the sector from Monday 6 September to Sunday 3 October 2021.
Media: mc_communication@uq.edu.au; +61 (0)429 056139.
