 So, I'm so excited to be able to present at this symposium and to see how it's grown, how Student Voice Australia has grown from humble beginnings to being so strong, it's really exciting. I'm also really excited to have Sarah joining me in this presentation. We did a presentation before and a webinar and it was so good to work with Sarah who has a wealth of experience and insights and knowledge. She, the Sarah started, what were we wearing, what were you wearing, whose band is up there and she is a law student at University of Newcastle and I'm sure, do we have all the bio somewhere else for everybody? No? Anyway. Okay, sorry to go, how long do we have Lisa now? I'm going to say that just do your presentation, we just may not have time for questions, we'll just keep it in the chat. Anyone who knows me will know that I find it really hard once I start talking in my absolute pet area, which is Student Voice as you would know, to stop talking but I will try very hard and I'm hoping Sarah will do most of the talking anyway because she's the person who we want to listen to the most. So partnering with students to better prevent and respond to sexual assault and sexual harassment. There is no area which is more important for Student Voice every year, every area, every facet of the sector's operations are hugely important to include Student Voice as we've been talking about, but this area can be no more important. So actualising Student Voice to partnership, there's a lot of talk about engaging Student Voice in this area as with all other areas, but how do you actually make it real, make it authentic and effective? So applying the partnership principles that we developed, the step up principles which are still the principles for Student Voice generally. Applying those in this context, the questions that we have to ask are why. I think why we don't really need to answer that question, but it seems so obvious to us students are at the centre of life on the campuses. They're out there in the campus, in the halls and everywhere in the university. They're the experts. So it's, it's patently obvious it seems that their voices are at the centre of everything we do in this area. Whose voices and how way we find them are the big questions that Sarah has is going to talk about a lot, I think, I hope. And how do we authentically and effectively engage this diverse range of voices, the quiet voices, which is part of the theme of this conference. It was interesting too, listening to the keynote speaker this morning, Lucy talking about power, because I think that that is a really key, key thing to be impressed in this area. And we will talk about that a little bit more. So the idea of the session, we want it to be essentially practical. What Sarah and I did, well, Sarah has all the knowledge and experience anyway, but what I did was I just, before I did the webinar, I went around my network and that I developed through Student Voice Australia and the Overseas Networks as well and just found out what everybody is doing in this area. So we just sort of put together a whole lot of initiatives, ideas and whatever that, that hopefully you can pick up, because you have the slides, there's a lot of stuff on the slides that we probably won't have time to go through, but you can pick it up. So what I see here is there's two areas really that we're talking about. One is action, which is listening and hearing to student, listening to student voices and actually hearing student voices and responding when students speak up, when students complain or report incidents of sexual harassment or sexual assault. How do we actually listen? This, one of the people I talked to was a person at York University, Sarah Ball, who talked about listening while silencing in this area. One of the experiences that they came across was a lot when students report or complain about incidents of student harassment or sexual harassment, sorry, or sexual assault, nothing goes any further, basically. They're assured that it is going to, but then they're basically silenced. So how do you make sure that you actually hear and respond when students speak up? And the other area is pro-action, which is engaging student voice holistically towards changing cultures at an institutional level. One thing that I always say is that to me, my view in this area is that working towards meaningful and meaningfully engaging the voices of students in this area should be thought of by everybody, but particularly by providers, by institutions, as not as a problem to be dealt with, but as an opportunity to create an affirming, supportive, inclusive, cohesive, and safe institution. And I think that needs to be sort of uppermised in everyone's mind, everyone who is working in universities in this area. So a common understanding of what partnering with students means here. I did actually have notes on my PowerPoint, but I seem to have lost them as I'm doing this, but never mind. I will just go with what I've got here. So what is needed for student voice to be engaged authentically and really effectively in this area is a common understanding of what partnering with students means, a genuine commitment on both sides to collaborating, real action on the part of the institution that students can see, finding ways to draw on and engage all voices, embracing the voices of survivors and training and guidance. And we'll come back to training and guidance, but I'm actually going to hand over to Sarah now to talk to this area. Hello. Thank you for having me. Firstly, I want to obviously acknowledge the traditional owners of the land that we're all coming from. I'm coming from a wobble cool land in Australia, and a wobble cool myself. I want to just pay respects to Elders past and present, and anyone listening that is First Nations as well. Yeah, it's a really interesting topic and I'm very privileged obviously to be here speaking. I've done quite a lot of work within sexual assault on harassment on campus, particularly with the University of Newcastle, a few others, but talking about things like our lived experience and how important it is that people with lived experience, students with lived experience, are the ones that are being consulted, engaged with when it comes to anything to do with improving sexual assault and harassment on campus. And I think that there's quite a multitude of ways that you can do it, and I'm sure we'll get into that in a bit, but it starts all the way from open week, from O week, and it can continue these conversations through breaks, mid semester breaks, during the long breaks as well. But there's always something we can do to contribute to ending sexual assault on harassment on campus. And I guess we'll get into a few more specific ideas as we go on. I think Sarah has very good ideas too about very strong ideas about using using student leaders and other student reps on campuses, but also using student clubs and working through students to find the ways to draw and engage all the voices. The voices that would normally, as with the theme of today, remain silent and quiet. Okay. I'm going to come back to training and guidance. So how do we do this? So what we did, as I said, is we went around networks and what I did, went around networks and talked to institutions in Australia and in New Zealand about what they did, how they brought it out. And the most important thing is to have it out in the open from day one, showcase that orientation, the importance of university places and working with and partnership with students generally, but in this area that we're focusing on. Demonstrating a clear focus on an environment free from assault and sexual harassment and highlighting the role of student voice in this and letting students know they can contribute to this place. Applying time and resources, which is very important, I find that quite often in my life in the university, I was previously at UTS when I began Student Voice Australia and UTS in Sydney, masquerading us in Australia. One of the things I always thought was when processes were being developed in new areas, universities had this huge inclination to go outside to get consultants and whatever. And my line was always you have the experts, you have the voices within. So it's a matter of applying time to finding back to that point that we were making before, applying, binding those voices and applying resources to those voices, to making sure that those voices within are effective. Developing connection of means of communication. Communication is hugely important and Sarah will talk about this, I hope, in a minute. Communication and transparency is hugely important. Sarah, would you like to pick up on that? Yeah, it's the most important thing because if, as an institution, you're not, you need to be trustworthy to students, particularly in this space. And people with lived experience are vulnerable and want to be able to trust their institutions that they are doing the right thing. I think, yeah, it's really important. But I think another thing I wanted to add on this is a lot of the time there isn't many people advocating in this space as students. But it's also important that we get the more quieter people to be advocating in the space as well. And we found a really awesome way of being able to do that is talking to clubs and student societies within your institution and, you know, starting to train them and starting to give them that understanding of sexual assault on campus and allowing them to contribute and continue on those conversations within their student, like community groups. And we found that that is, that's really important because students are going to trust the people that they trust. So cultural and ethnic groups, religions, a whole range of different things, they'll trust the people who are the leaders of their clubs. So if the leaders of their clubs or the executives are the ones that are passing on this information, it's going to be more trusted from them rather than potentially a newsletter that's sent out that most people might not see. So it's really important that we start with the people who have that really important impact, which can be executives and people running clubs. And also from day one at O Week as well, I found that a lot of institutions would try and, I guess, not want to bring awareness to consent, respectful relationships, sexual assault and harassment because they thought that if they bring awareness to it, then it will mean that it's happening. And what we have found with every institution we have worked with is when they actually have information, education on sexual assault and harassment, it's actually making students feel so much more safer because they feel like their institution is actually actively working to do something to see an end to it. So we find that that's really important that, you know, from day one that we are supplying that education, but we're also doing it in ways that people with lived experience, you know, get to have a seat at the table, they get to have a voice but also that we're engaging with people who might not put their hands up for a whole range of different positions. Great. Thank you, Sarah. So what does some institutions actually do? It's a really good point that Sarah made about some institutions being or some providers being a bit low to bring that out at the beginning, but it seems that there are, there is a lot more of a move to acknowledge that it is happening in all providers. I mean, the reports that have been done is just, there was one recently show huge incidents of sexual harassment and sexual assault on university or on provider campuses, and I think it's important to recognize that rather than trying to hide it under a blanket, to recognize it and deal with it. So one of the things, one of the things that we came across was actually from my university, UTS, which was pop-up stalls at campus events and fun days, posters with provocation questions. Am I, I have a bit of a problem here because I find that I'm blocking out half of my screen, am I, I'm not doing that there? No. Okay. That's good. That's good. It's a bit disconcerting. Okay. So pop-up stalls, posters with provocation questions like what do you think is sexual assault, sexual harassment? Ask them to put posters, okay, a range of scenarios. How do you see students can engage in addressing these issues? How would, would you like to engage? What would encourage you to engage? And what do you see your engagement would look like? I think Sarah talked about court boards on, on at these events, so at all events on campus and fun days from orientation onwards, court boards where students can leave messages and make suggestions. Do you have anything more to add? Yeah, I think that it's really important when you're trying to engage your institution with this kind of advocacy and work that you also have anonymous options for people to contribute. So you've got your people who are going to put your hand up for the roles and then you've got your people who can be easily convinced or will come along with education. But then you've also got people, particularly who live experience, who might really want to contribute but either are not in a safe place to do so or for any reasons just want to be anonymous. So it's really important that it could be like a feedback link or a survey or something we do time to time and this will just leave a court board somewhere where there's some pins and some sticky notes and you can go leave a response to whatever question that may be there anonymously. That's a really important way to be able to do stuff as well because sometimes people will be unsafe because you know because of cultural reasons a whole range of different reasons but doesn't mean that they still shouldn't be able to you know contribute to this kind of work. Thank you Sarah. So to move on to a hugely important thing, an important point which is of engaging students in this area to work with students in real terms and effective terms is training and guidance. So I think that it's really important and I think students have a role to work with their from the beginning with their providers to push for much better training and guidance that actually seems to be provided these days but to work with them to ensure that students actually are able to provide are in a position to provide their voice in a way that is effective and works. So a commitment to training not only students of course but staff with input from a diverse range of student groups. The diverse range of student groups is really important into the training and guidance because obviously there are so many different the demographics and providers these days have so many different groups that we've talked about today before that Lucy talked about and so it's important that there is input from those diverse range of student groups into the training and guidance. Collaboration to develop the means of training which works best for all people from those diverse groups. The means to work with students from the beginning on how the training should be done, when, where, and ways that affect, that ways that are most effective for students. Encouraging students to run campaigns, advocate for change in specific areas where they see need and for example in sports clubs. Do you like to pick that up Sarah or you? I think I, yeah I think I sort of covered it before but it's just like you know I think with the training it's really important that because any teacher in any class anyone that you're comfortable with as a student you might go in disguise too and if they and we need our staff but it also our executives as well so like our club leaders to also be trained in things like understanding its sexual assault and harassment because they need to know how to take disclosures but also what to do because you don't want to give the wrong advice but also yeah I think it's there's just a whole range of ways of what we can do it but they definitely as that bottom point says needs to be anonymous options so that everyone can have a say in this space. And also thank you Sarah and also important to work with students to use I said times and places and how training is going to be conducted but also on using appropriate languages and cultural norms for that training it's very important to work with students from the beginning to to establish those that those processes are comply with everybody's that I've trained to the students. So I think this was from sorry I lost my notes here um design and teaching of an institution-wide module aimed at helping students and staff understand what is not acceptable conduct we really we've really talked about this but we talked to I talked to a lot of different institutions about how what they actually do and there was one that I thought was was highlighting was Victoria University in Wellington I think we have somebody here from Victoria University doing um which is now part of student voice of the nation and they developed um three in um collaboration with students they developed three modules and they in partnership they will workshop with students before going live and these were areas that responding to disclosures that's the reaction part boundaries and appropriate conduct and being active bystander which is grow action which is actually developing a safe campus. Sarah would you like to take over here on these some ideas that you put forward? Yeah so the first one is establish a student experience panel and I'm very big on if students are going to contribute in any way particularly in this field because it is so taxing and a lot of people who will be a part of this will have lived experience so they're also contributing their lived experience as well as their time they should be paid um and there's a whole different ways that you can go about that um but it will allow for students to be able to have a say on policies reports reporting methods things that you need to do a whole range of things as well to go to the third point the student advocates advisory group so this is something I started up in Newcastle in October of last year and what it looks like is it's 10 to 12 students in the institution and they have lived experience and they meet once a month to either reflect on some of the stuff that it is doing to do work on sexual assault harassment or to look over trainings and policies so that's been running since then and it's been quite successful so far we've um we looked over all of our securities training what they do training wise um where they get their training and then suggested a whole range of new training that we think that needs to be done because they are dealing a lot of the time with that first response I'm just gonna have to give you one more one more minute and then we're going to have to move on to the third okay study okay okay yeah so um that's a really powerful way of doing things because you can reflect um and give you know that really important lived experience through that group thanks Sarah that's great um and centres for participation the big point that I think is really important here we've talked about financial incentives etc but the really big point is as Sarah makes so I should lead you into it it's really it's important that students can see that you're doing things from there that your their voice is being put into practice is that would you like to pick that up just in the last minute Sarah yeah um it's just really important that they yeah they're a part of the change um and that it's not just the institution making the change and then there are lots for it needs to be engaged with students engage with lived experience from the start all the way to the end and as that last slide said this there's a whole great way of range things to do it like pizza days gift cards a whole range of things yeah so I think that's pretty much it but it's just you know recognizing that we need lived experience um and we need to be it if we really want to end sexual assault harassment we need to be engaging with students that's fantastic thanks Sarah I should leave it with you having the last point the slides are going to be available and there's a lot of stuff on them so hopefully there are ideas that you can pick up on um and work with and that's my favorite slide for student voice that I use should be the way of doing things not an add-on student voice thank you thank you all thank you Sarah thanks so thank you both so much