Uni prompted to improve sex harrassment reporting

A study of New Zealand universities and polytechnics has revealed that the University of Otago is one of only two that do not collate records on how many cases of sexual harassment and sexual assault are reported on campus.

The report also recommends that all other tertiary institutes introduce proactive harassment prevention policies like Otago Polytechnic's, which it says has "by far" the most extensive prevention policy of all.

The campus safety audit by the New Zealand Union of Students' Associations (NZUSA) analyses the sexual harassment policies of every tertiary education provider in the country and makes recommendations about how they could be strengthened.

It also surveyed more than 700 students about their experiences with relationship violence, and found 26.6% said unhealthy relationships were common in their social circle.

The report concluded that students did not feel their institutions did enough to mitigate the risk of harassment on campus.

University of Otago spokeswoman Megan McPherson said the university did keep records of reports of sexual harassment and assault, just not in a way that was easily accessible.

Reports of harassment (including by text, general annoyance and sexual) among students were dealt with by the proctor, who recorded them. There were 23 such reports in 2010.

Most reports of harassment involving staff were recorded by the relevant division of the university in compliance with employment and human rights legislation, with human resources director overseeing the response to the complaint.

Formal complaints were also reported to the university's ethical behaviour committee.

Hence, a request from the NZUSA, which asked the university's human resources director for the "total number of complaints received by you or your staff from past or present staff, students or applications pertaining to sexual harassment or misconduct by staff, students or any other individual or entity in 2007, 2008 and 2009", was refused because it was "too broad and would have required significant resources to respond", Mrs McPherson said.

Asked how, then, if it took significant resources to find out how many reports of sexual harassment or assault had been made, was the university able to regularly measure the effectiveness of its sexual harassment and assault policies, which are part of its ethical behaviour policy, she said the human resources director monitored any significant issues and patterns relating to staff.

She said the university was proactive in making available information on sexual harassment to all using its campuses.

This year, the university produced and distributed around its campuses more than 500 posters advertising its ethical behaviour policy, which made it clear that behaviours such as sexual harassment were unacceptable, and listed details of staff and student contacts.

The policy and contact network were also on the university's website, and promotional cards and pamphlets were widely distributed to students.

The university mediator this year increased the number of training sessions on the ethical behaviour policy, which she ran for staff. The student code of conduct was clear on the university's expectation of students to not engage in behaviours that endangered their own or others' safety.

The NZUSA's report praised the proactive harassment prevention policy of Dunedin's other tertiary education provider, Otago Polytechnic, recommending other institutions adopt similar programmes.

A prevention policy was not the same has having a policy that dealt with sexual harassment or a programme to actively prevent harassment, the report said.

Instead, the prevention policy informed people of those practices, instead of just assuming they would be noticed.

The author of the report, Caitlin Dunham, said having preventive and reactive policies alongside each other was best practice when it came to safe spaces.

She said she hoped institutions and student association executives took the report into account when undertaking internal reviews.

"Institutions must have an appropriate attitude when it comes to issues such as harassment and assault, and should be willing to fix gaps in their procedures when needed."

debbie.porteous@odt.co.nz