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Last night, the Chancellor of @UniofAdelaide sent a statement via email regarding ICAC's findings about former Vice Chancellor Peter Rathjen's sexual abuse of two staff members. The statement can also be viewed here: https://www.adelaide.edu.au/newsroom/news/list/2020/08/26/independent-commissioner-against-corruption-icac-findings-relating-to-the
In it, the Chancellor states that the University will accept & adopt all of ICAC's recommendations, which can be viewed on page 11 here: https://icac.sa.gov.au/system/files/ICAC_Statement_About_an_Investigation-University_of_Adelaide.pdf
Here's the thing though. Those ICAC recommendations that @UniofAdelaide will now apparently adopt? Yeah, they're pretty damn close to the ones that they were already supposed to have adopted following the @AusHumanRights #ChangeTheCourse report. Back in 2017.
The recommendations that @UniofAdelaide claimed - both on their own website and to TEQSA & the Commission - they that had implemented. But nobody ever checked to make sure that they actually had done what they said they'd done.
After the #ChangeTheCourse report, why didn't anyone check to see that unis had implemented the things they claimed to have implemented?
Why did TEQSA rely solely on self-reported actions by the unis about matters as important as sexual assault & sexual harassment? We don't let students grade their own work, why were unis allowed to grade themselves?
There are far more questions than answers at this point, & some of those questions come down to incredibly important issues of governance & regulation. Why, over & over again, are universities given free passes when it comes to sexual assault & sexual harassment?
Why aren't they ever held accountable for not adhering to the legislation that governs them - that is, the Higher Education Standards Framework? Why aren't they ever penalised for failing to ensure safe environments, as required by the Standards?
How did it come be that universities, who receive billions of dollars in tax payer funds a year, have been able to dodge any accountability for the harm that they allow to occur, and contribute to?
This is a much bigger issue than just @UniofAdelaide & Rathjen, but questions have to be asked about Adelaide's governance. Why did the uni employ external counsel when the allegations were made about Rathjen? They have their own lawyers.
You go outside of your organisation when you want something to be kept secret. External counsel is a way of keeping it out of sight of the rest of the institution.
Further questions have to be asked about the practices of both UniMelb and UTas. UniMel was aware of the incident that took place when Rathjen was their employee. Did they notify UTas, where he went to next?
UTas was aware that a complaint had been filed against them with TEQSA for mishandling reports of sexual assault & allowing a convicted child sex offender to remain enrolled & on campus & that Rathjen was named in that complaint.
Did anyone at UTas mention that to anyone at Adelaide before he was appointed VC? How has the higher education sector allowed a man with a history of sexual misconduct to move from one position of power to the next, all while claiming #RespectNowAlways?
We've been fighting for universities to be held accountable for years. We've begged Education Ministers to intervene, filed multiple federal complaints, raised the issue with as many people in power as possible. There has been no accountability.
We've been screaming from the rooftops that without accountability, nothing will change. Abusers will continue to be allowed to abuse, universities will continue to allow them to get away with it, and unis will continue to be allowed to flout their legal requirements.
Will the higher ed sector finally sit up & take notice, now that there's an ICAC report against a Vice Chancellor? Will they finally listen to what students have been saying for decades? Will a single university in this country finally face a real penalty of some kind?
In my experience? Probably not. The higher ed regulatory system seems to have been designed to ensure as little oversight & accountability for unis as possible. And where those accountability mechanisms do exist, they're not actually used.
These aren't isolated incidents. It's not just Rathen, it's not just Adelaide Uni. It's a systemic problem that requires a systemic response. Unfortunately, the systems that exist protect the universities as much as the universities protect the perpetrators.
And in case anyone isn't familiar with them, these are the areas for action from the #ChangeTheCourse report. The ones that @UniofAdelaide agreed to & said they were implementing back in 2017.
These are the things that all unis said they agreed to & were implementing. The things that the Commission & TEQSA allowed them to self-report that they were doing, or had done. I think the ICAC report shows us all what a mistake that was.
"The report's findings were delivered to the University of Melbourne last year but the institution did not pass them onto the University of Adelaide where Professor Rathjen had since been appointed vice-chancellor." https://www.abc.net.au/news/2020-08-27/sexual-complaint-against-professor-investigated-by-university/12601766
I'll say it again: it takes a village to protect an abuser, and that village exists across and within the university sector.
