Last Thursday, following its announcements to strengthen cybersecurity, the Australian National University (ANU) launched its strategy to deter sexual violence in its campus.
The strategy – which outlines what the University plans to achieve from 2019 to 2026 and how they will accomplish it – is the result of various consultations with University staff, students, violence prevention practitioners, experts and advocates as well as support services.
“This strategy will guide the entire ANU community – to address sexual violence at the individual, campus and whole-of-university level,” ANU Vice-Chancellor Professor Brian Schmidt said.
"At ANU we are a community that is open, inclusive and respectful to everyone. We want to be an environment that allows everyone to feel safe and included. And we want an environment that actively promotes respectful behaviour in all relationships.”
Among the goals the strategy seeks to achieve are to strengthen the University’s response system to support victim-survivors and to hold perpetrators accountable as well as to make sure that ANU’s community is aware of the disclosure and reporting processes as well as the support services available to students and staff.
Delivered in three phases
ANU’s Respectful Relationships Unit (RRU), which was only established in January this year. Professor Schmidt noted that since the establishment of the RRU, “we are able to provide training, coordination, and best practice responses to sexual assault and sexual violence across our campus.”
RRU head Sue Webeck said that the first phase of the strategy, which will be implemented from 2019 to 2020, will identify what the University has already taken to deter sexual violence.
From there, they will be using this to build a strong and coordinated prevention system which will be scaled up and implemented campus-wide.
"This includes the development and testing of an online disclosure tool, a sexual misconduct policy which sits alongside this strategy, and a coordinated training approach to sexual violence prevention, intervention and response,” Webeck said.
"This will ensure we are working to stop sexual misconduct before it occurs while also responding effectively and with care when it does occur.”
The second phase, which will be from 2020 to 2023, seeks to strengthen the community efforts an actions to make sure that the ANU will have access to these effective interventions.
ANU in its strategy said it will be reaching out to its community through media channels, forums and even direct engagement with their stakeholders.
“We must work as a community and take individual as well as institutional responsibility for addressing sexual misconduct at our ANU,” Webeck said.
"We must also ensure survivors know how they can make disclosures and reports of sexual misconduct both at ANU and in the broader community, and be confident in the knowledge that they will be supported."
The last phase, from 2023 to 2026, “is really about maintaining our efforts and ensurig they are firmly embedded in our practice and seeing real prevention results acro the entire campus community,” Webeck added.