Three male students at one of Australia’s most prestigious universities have sparked outrage after tearing up a sexual assault report at a student council meeting and loudly declaring that ‘no one cares’.
An annual meeting of members of the University of Sydney’s Student Representative Council was held on Wednesday evening, where the issue of sexual violence and hazing in Australian universities was discussed.
SRC Women’s Officers and current Sexual Violence Officers, Ellie Robertson and Martha Barlow, handed out copies of The Red Zone Report – which focuses on systemic toxic cultures in Australian universities.
But footage of the meeting, which was streamed live to USYD’s student newspaper Honi Soit, showed two male students tearing up copies of the report.
One of them shouted ‘no one cares’, while a third male student threw pieces of the report at another student council member.
Other students booed loudly and shouted “shame.”
It is understood that all three men are associated with the campus-oriented political faction of the Young Liberals.
“We have seen more cases of hazing, bullying and sexual violence. This is an ongoing result of the elitist culture of these institutions,” Ms Robertson said as Ms Barlow handed out the reports.
Three male students at the University of Sydney have sparked national outrage after tearing up a sexual assault report during a student council meeting on Wednesday.
Some other students heard them chanting, “Racist, sexist, anti-queer, liberals are not welcome here,” after the report was torn up.
Ms Barlow said the response from the young male students to the report ‘horrifying, but perhaps not surprising’.
‘It is, quite frankly, a reprehensible display of misogyny to laugh so openly…[at the] victim-survivors [in the report]and an incredibly meaningful one,” she said told news.com.au.
‘Just like the colleges themselves, these student representatives would rather ignore the problem of sexual violence altogether and pretend it does not exist. To this we say that the time has long passed for sweeping this under the carpet.’
The University of Sydney This is evident from the Annual Sexual Misconduct Report In 2023, 246 reports of sexual assault or intimidation by employees and students were made.
That number had more than doubled from 121 in 2022.
University of Sydney students declared ‘nobody cares’ about sexual violence, immediately after two women gave a presentation on the subject
The 200-page Red Zone Report was commissioned and published by End Rape on Campus (EROC) in February 2018.
It contained graphic photographsscreenshots, police reports and stories of rape and hazing victims within the residential colleges of universities.
Lead author Nina Funnell and EROC founder Sharna Bremner said in a statement that the incident at the University of Sydney “disgusted” them.
“To hear current students say no one cares while laughing about rape and hazing is not a slap in the face to us as authors of The Red Zone,” they said.
“It’s a slap in the face to those who were harmed during the lectures and survived, and to the loved ones of those who didn’t.”
USYD Vice-Chancellor Professor Joanne Wright said an “immediate investigation” had been launched into the incident.
“Any behavior that mocks victim survivors or ignores the impact of trauma resulting from sexual misconduct is absolutely unacceptable,” Professor Wright told the publication.
NSW Liberal Leader Mark Speakman also said the students would be investigated.
Daily Mail Australia has contacted the University of Sydney’s Young Liberals pro-political group for comment.