Tackling campus harassment ‘not a priority’ amid financial crisis

The ongoing financial crisis at UK universities could see progress made on tackling campus sexual harassment “slip away”, a conference has heard.

Lisa Brooks-Lewis, the social impact and inclusivity manager at Loughborough University, said work to tackle sexual harassment at higher education institutions needs to be “prioritised in the same way as other areas of strategic work in higher education”, at a discussion on tackling sexual misconduct at UK universities. 

The Office for Students announced last year that to meet conditions of registration, universities would have to make “significant and credible difference” to protect students from any abuses of power and sexual harassment, which could include introducing bans on staff-student relationships.

But Brooks-Lewis said that students who have been subjected to sexual harassment have “not been prioritised” by universities. 

“It’s a bit like other work around equity, diversity and inclusion. The Public Sector Equality Duty is not at the forefront of senior leaders’ minds, because unless something goes through the ombudsman or goes through the Equality and Human Rights Commission, then higher education institutions think that they can just get away with it and they can just carry on,” she told delegates at a Westminster Higher Education Forum event.

Instead, at the “forefront” of university leaders’ minds during the current financial difficulties were efforts to increase international student numbers to boost tuition fee income, “so though the Office for Students’ regulation does go a way to address some of that, because of the way that the compliance is set up and there isn’t an assurance framework linked to it as of yet, I think it could slip away because there’s not funding resources allocated in a sustainable way”.

Meanwhile, Graham Towl, professor of psychology at Durham University, said that the OfS’ recommendation to ban student-staff relationships was “an easy win” for universities, and cheaper than alternative – and previously touted – suggestions of introducing a register of intimate personal relationships between staff and students, for example.

If institutions choose not to introduce bans on staff-student relationships to meet OfS requirements, “universities can choose to spend more money and do things differently”, but he questioned why a university would take such an option.

“Why would we want to spend more money where we don’t have to? It’s extraordinary that people want to invest in that as far as I would say, whereas there are other parts where they could invest in for example, including training, increasing reporting and so on.”

Sexual harassment has been found to be prevalent across university campuses, with an OfS survey last year finding that 27 per cent of female students had experienced unwanted sexual behaviour in the preceding 12 months, while 13 per cent said they had been victims of sexual assault or violence in that time. 

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