 tropical country today and thank you Divya and Sadeff for introducing us and hosting us today. So yeah, so I am presenting more than a checkbox, piloting a program to embed the voices of student survivors into university policy and governance at UON. So to start us off, I want to introduce myself a bit more and how the paper I'm presenting came about. So I'm Adriana, hello. I am a student at the University of Newcastle. I'm doing my PhD in sociology and I very briefly I study masculinities with queer Latinx men in Australia. So what I've been, what I'm presenting is something I've done alongside my studies. It's not my PhD work. So about a year ago now, I was awarded a Global Voices Scholarship and Global Voices is a non-profit for young people, by young people that really tries to mentor and train us in developing our diplomacy and policy writing skills. And they do that through really practical experiences. So we attend an international delegation. I got to go to the Commission on the Status of Women that's held at the UON every year where we talk about issues affecting women and girls globally. And we also get to meet with people who are in positions to change or influence policy in Australia. So we get to learn from them as well. And finally, we also do a policy fellowship where we write a policy paper with key recommendations about an issue we really care about. And I chose to focus on sexual violence and higher education. So that is the paper that I am presenting today. So I am an international student. I'm from California. I identify as Latinx or Latina. And I'm also the first in my family to go to university and do post-grad and now a PhD. I'm at the very end of my PhD, thankfully. But yeah, so before I also move on to inform this paper, I did do a lot of research and read what it's out there. But to make it as applicable to my community to UON, I also met with stakeholders and people in the university as well as outside. So I met with the student association president and general manager with previous student association presidents, the support services at my university. I met with my local MPs as well. And part of doing this was, yes, to know if they would support this, but also to know if they would even engage with something like this. And I also met with quite a few other people, like Andre on campus Australia, who are incredible and have been so supportive. And also another advocate from another university, a student advocate who I really wondered what their relationship was like in trying to work with their university, what worked and what didn't. And they shared their experience on being part of an advisory board and really being the last stop before going public with something about this topic. So thank you so much to the people that have met with me. And Libby, I don't know if that's you here, but thank you for sharing all of that with me. So before getting into the paper as well, I want to touch on an intersection. So I am casual staff and have been casual for most of my PhD. And I did live on campus at one point. So universities are places where we live, we study, and we also work. It can be all or some of that. And I think to really address this issue, it has to be approached university-wide, because all of these things are connected. So here we go. All right. So in Australia, one in 20 university students have experienced sexual assault, including one in six experiencing sexual harassment since starting university. The Australian Human Rights Commission found that 39 percent of women in the workplace experience harassment and assaults compared to 26 percent of men. Trans and gender diverse students were more likely to experience harassment at university than men and women. The recommendations made by Change the Course, a survey conducted by the Australian Human Rights Commission about prevalence and mitigation of sexual based violence at all Australian universities, were responded to by 39 universities, including UON. Further, they had a one-year follow up with how these changes had been or were going to be implemented. Since then, universities have put out various campaigns addressing consent and sexual harassment. They've made efforts to make reporting more accessible or visible on their website and have included a mandatory consent module for all students. Despite these actions, there are several barriers that are still present in light of these campaigns and efforts. In 2018, a survey by the National Tertiary Education Union showed that almost 40 percent of staff said they did not think anything would be done if they made a report, and 38 percent stating they did not trust the reporting process and fear their career could be jeopardized. Although reporting has been made more visible and campaigns and policy have declared a zero-tolerant stance on sexual assault and harassment, gender-based violence is still a problem at Australian universities and needs a cultural change. So on the slides here, EROC has kindly let me borrow their infographic here on this side. And here they show these percentage, these stats are from 2017 from Change the Course. So it shows the percentages of students who did not report after experiencing harassment and assault. The ones over here in blue are from the latest National Student Safety Survey that took place in Australia, and these are the specific statistics for UON on the number of students that made a formal complaint to university and also sought support from the university. And there's a lot more in there as well. But I want to focus on this text here. I don't know if it's too small to read. It says, the small minority of students who did report were often unsatisfied with the response of their university. And I think that it is so important to make sure that students know you can report and that these support services are available. But it's also just as important to know what happens after that, what the follow-up is like for students and potentially staff that do report, how are perpetrators being held accountable for their behavior. I think that's just as important as visualizing this, right? So in looking at what's already been published and recommended, and especially the recommendations made by the Australian Human Rights Commission, there was a theme of transparency needed from universities to help reach gender equality and eradicate sexual harassment and assault in the context of students as well as a workplace. This paper endorses the centrality of transparency as the people most affected by these policy decisions are university students and staff and future leaders. And I specifically focus on these two policies from my university, which are the response policy and response procedure. So I had a look at these and this is what I've come to recommend. So currently the University of Newcastle's sexual assault and sexual harassment response policy is reviewed annually by the deputy vice chancellor academic and the vice president without specification of what the review process entails and encourages. The policy also states any changes made to the policy must be approved by the executive committee. There is no link to specify who makes up this committee, however it can be found through the website search engine. The student voice is not part of this process, nor does it align with the victim-led approach the university states it undertakes and encourages. This may contribute to the mistrust in universities being capable and having the trained experts in support that students and staff need through these experiences. So for this slide it's really just looking at the big picture. It's not an issue specific to UON, but we're really talking about equity. Sexual violence definitely affects how well we're able to engage ourselves in studies, immerse ourselves, and if we're even able to complete our studies. We are talking about sustainable development goals. The university definitely champions itself as practicing these goals and what better place to do that than in our community and we are also talking about a human rights issue. So I propose an independent body at the University of Newcastle to monitor university policy in relation to sexual assault and harassment, renewals, actions, changes, and proposals to ensure changes are being made and implemented and taken on by the university with input of staff and students, especially those with lived experience at every step of the process. So these are the recommendations that I've made in my paper, right, a setting up this independent body especially to keep track of what that progress looks like and how satisfied students and the community are and doing that through embedding the voices of students and staff, especially those with lived experience. So while victim survivors are often the ones to carry the burden and advocating for change, their voices should always be included and centered by prioritizing students and staff from diverse backgrounds including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islanders, sexual and gender diverse people, culturally and linguistic diverse communities, young people, people with disabilities in this body. And here I've also put in a quote by the Australian Human Rights Commission because a lot of these same groups of people are the ones that also experience sexual harassment at higher levels in the workplace. So how can we go about this? So I propose doing this with the help of two frameworks. The first one is by Student Voice Australia. They carried out a pilot scheme in 2018 that embeds the voices of students into multiple democratic processes at the university thereby encouraging input and feedback from the university community and establishing a partnership with students and staff. This training follows the seven principles that I have there, those little stairs and principle one is building authentic partnerships and I think that's something that can definitely be worked towards, but it's not something that's just going to be granted. So the SVA, Student Voice Australia pilot program also reported on its participatory evaluation approach of this pilot program, which resulted in high support from students and staff to continue this type of training and support and advocacy. Participatory evaluation is informed by participatory action research, so it's getting into a bit of the methodology. And this places students and staff and stakeholders as experts in their own lives, which is really important here. The evaluation is framed as a cooperation, a partnership, and enhances transparency. It should seek an intersectional framework to allow student voices to have a space to share their barriers and hardships unique to them, their community or culture. So this was ran at 10 different Australian universities where students are mentored and trained to help include their voices into policy and governance. So the second framework that I'm also suggesting that we work with or use as a basis is the family violence experts by experience framework. It was co-created with people with lived experience of family violence and it sets out a strong plan and has important considerations when working with survivor advocates and including their voices into policy and service planning. So I say this can serve as a basis for including a trauma-informed approach and best practice principles when working with victim survivors of sexual violence. So with these two frameworks, there would be workshops ran for students and staff that make up this independent body to train and support them through learning the university system, as well as finessing the type of preparation involved before high level meetings and decisions, so not being thrown in the deep end. These workshops will be ran by the Engagement Division of the University, the person that spearheads the SBA program at UON, in collaboration with students and staff with the resources developed by SBA. Additionally, external expert organizations like Endrape on Campus Australia can be invited to share their expertise and work with students. UON is already a member institution of SBA and has access to its resources, which is really great. These workshops and training can be run twice a year, I mean twice a semester, sorry, at UON to accommodate student and staff availability during the trial period of one year. Running these workshops and trainings will include cost of payment of people running these trainings, catering, public transport costs for participants, and cover childcare costs to make this a more equitable and accessible group to take part in. Additionally, students and casual staff will need to be compensated for their work and should be offered a voucher for each day of training attended and subsequent meetings or participation in the governance process. All who participate should have access to free long-term counseling, evidence-based vicarious trauma training, and bystander training provided or supported by the university. So research supports that victim survivors involved in co-production of resources and policy are not drawn to this work for compensation, but perceived as a symbolic gesture of being valued and recognized. A common issue is in supporting this type of research or support for victim survivors is the lack of ongoing support and funding. So I think continuing this pilot program or beginning to engage with it with support from the university has potential to show commitment towards ending sexual violence and fiscally and symbolically recognize those with lived experiences. So there's probably definitely more than two challenges ahead, but I think engaging with a participatory methodology can be difficult because it's meant to disrupt those existing power dynamics that exist between students, staff, and then different divisions of the university by using a participatory framework or methodology. It doesn't immediately just make these things disappear and it's going to be something that has to be practiced and I think a lot of reflection is going to be needed, especially by those in very senior positions, to make sure that voices of survivors or people who are experts in this area through their research aren't always being overshadowed and of course support through funding I think is always a key issue in something like this. Yeah, so that's it for me and I'm happy for anyone to email me if they'd like or have any questions. Bea, thank you so much for having me and listening. Thank you so much for that amazing session Adriana. Very insightful work in terms of gender-based violence. We have eight minutes for a Q&A session. If anyone would like to ask a question you can pop them in the chat or feel free to speak as well. We've got a question in the chat by Libby. She's asking, has the university responded to this research at all? Hello, this is the first time I'm presenting it to them but I think in my attempt to try and work with them and I'm not talking about the student association because that's independent of the university. The only response that I've gotten was through the media. I was interviewed by a journalist and they responded to me through that article so that's been really most of my connection and recently I have met with the university again with someone working in this area as our respectful community's coordinator who has been much more receptive and open to listening to what I am working on and it's just being a lot more open. I invited them here today. I invited quite a few stakeholders from my university and MPs and people I talked to to come. Yeah. Any other questions? Afraid to pop them in the chat or you can also raise your hand or just speak. Could I just add a comment? I'm from the University of Newcastle and I just want to congratulate Adriana on her presentation and also for reaching out to us. There are a number of us on the the call today who have come along to hear what Adriana's got to say and we certainly will be following up with her to see how we can help move some of the fantastic research that she's done forward. She mentioned Jane McCartney who's our respectful coordinator's community coordinator and as Adriana said she's already spoken to us. So great work Adriana, well done and we look forward to working with you as you move this forward. Thank you so much for coming today as well.