Report details vile uni hazing
A DAMNING new report has detailed long-running sexual humiliation rituals at Sydney University’s residential colleges.
It describes a series of rituals at the colleges, including male students masturbating into female students’ shampoo and body wash bottles.
Others include students being encouraged to post online graphic and embarrassing photos about other students’ sexual activity.
It also details drinking games where students are egged on to consume more than a dozen drinks without a bathroom stop, causing them to wet their pants, and other rituals such as locking new students in bathrooms and dousing them with vats of dead fish.
There were also reports of a “bone room” at St Paul’s, a large space covered in mattresses to which male students invite unsuspecting female freshers – first-year students.
The 200-page The Red Zone report on sexual violence and hazing in Australian university residential colleges includes case studies at 12 universities, including all eight of Australia’s “leading” universities.
It draws on student interviews, data gathered from freedom of information requests, and social and mainstream media reports, including some that have previously gained widespread coverage.
While much of what is in the report is not new, its authors say there is an entrenched culture of sexual assault, hazing and excessive alcohol consumption, resulting in a toxic and dangerous environment, particularly for new students.
Orientation week, when new students get a taste of university life, is considered particularly dangerous – especially for sexual assault and excessive alcohol consumption.
“While there have been dozens of attempts over the years to stop the abuse over this period, sexual assault and hazing activities have continued,” one author, Nina Funnell, told the ABC.
“In recent years, students and parents have alleged that hazing has contributed to selfharm and actual suicide.”
The worrying incidents included the death of a St Andrew’s student who drunkenly walked onto the road. His peers reportedly commiserated with a keg of beer.
Self-harming was also a common theme, with another male student attempting to take his own life after being outed to his peers for looking at gay porn.
Academic and gender equality advisor Professor Catharine Lumby wrote the foreword for The Red Zone and told the ABC the report was “sickening reading”. She would not send her child to a residential college after reading the document.
Ms Funnell said little had changed despite a succession of reports about dangerous and destructive practices at residential colleges.
She wants hazing criminalised and says the federal government must set up a task force to investigate such colleges, describing them as “a protected species”.
Sydney University says it will respond once vicechancellor Michael Spence has been able to read the report in full.
The report focuses on colleges linked to the University of Sydney, but the authors say the culture extends Australiawide, citing examples from the Australian Human Rights Commission’s 2017 report into sexual assault.