Colleges install new posts to reduce on-campus sexual violence

Minister for Further and Higher Education Simon Harris announced €1.5 million of funding is to be directed to Higher Education Institutions for the purpose of creating new posts to push forth on-campus zero tolerance of sexual violence.

The news follows RTÉ News' findings through Freedom of Information (FOI) which discovered an underwhelming reporting of sexual harassment and violence on college campuses, based on data retrieved from many Higher Education Institutes (HEIs).

17 positions will be created with the funding, including response managers and prevention officers, across college campuses in Ireland.

The new directive will also provide certain consent clauses, bystander programmes and the option to appoint external investigators to aid in cases of sexual violence and harrassment.

For the study, colleges were asked through FOI for the number of sexual assault and harassment cases reported by students on campus within the last five years. The information provided showed a difference between the FOI requests and actual reported cases, proving that there’s still much work to be done to make third-level institutions a safer space for all students.

There has been an increase in reported cases throughout recent years. Such was the case with the University of Galway, who reported 25 cases within the last five years and just one case in 2019.

Other colleges are now implementing methods of documenting reports, such as University of Cork, which did not even have a database for sexual assault reports in 2019 and now reports seven complaints within the past five years.

Across all reports from institutions, the figures remain non-representative of the reality of sexual violence on campuses. Director of the Rape Crisis Network Ireland, Cliona Sadlier, said of the data, “I wouldn't say that that reflects the actual incident of sexual violence. We would expect, because of the age cohort that dominates third level institutions, because of the particular vulnerability of people aged 18-25, what we would expect to see is a slightly higher prevalence in these institutions than in the general population."

The government made minimal steps toward more efficient incident reporting in 2019 when they implemented the Framework of Consent. This step, according to Sadlier, has not fully benefited the frequency of reporting sexual violence on campus yet.

“We're not necessarily seeing both students and staff come forward in any sort of numbers yet, because the system is really unproven still,” says Sadlier. “So, there is increased reporting, which is of course a good thing, but we do want to see over the next few years, how these cases are handled, and we would like to see a consistent and standard approach to for example the FOIs, which might evidence that there is a consistent approach to sexual harassment across all HEIs.”

The 17 new posts installed through the Minister’s funding will give rise to Sexual Violence and Harrassment Prevention and Response Managers on third-level institution campuses. With officers to monitor cases, the aim is to address some of the unchanged issues regarding student sexual assault reportings.

The Department emphasised the importance of “the collection of adequate data” as part of their zero-tolerance policy surrounding sexual violence.