Three male students at one of Australia’s most prestigious universities have sparked outrage after tearing up a report on sexual violence and loudly declaring ‘no one cares’ during a student council meeting.
An annual meeting of members of the University of Sydney’s Student Representative Council was held on Wednesday night where the issue of sexual violence and hazing at Australian universities was mentioned.
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 at Australian universities.
But in footage from the meeting, which was live-streamed to USYD’s student newspaper Honi Soit, two male students were seen tearing up copies of the report.
One of them shouted out ‘no one cares’ while a third male student threw scraps of the report at another student council member.
Other students loudly booed and shouted ‘shame’.
It is understood that all three men are connected to the campus’ Young Liberals-aligned political group.
‘We have seen more instances of hazing, bullying and sexual violence. This is a continuing 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 report on sexual violence during a student council meeting on Wednesday
Some other students were heard chanting: ‘Racist, sexist, anti-queer, Liberals are not welcome here’, after the report was torn up.
Ms Barlow said the young male students’ response to the report was ‘horrific, but perhaps not surprising’.
‘It is a quite frankly reprehensible display of misogyny to so blatantly laugh…[at the] victim-survivors [in the report], and an incredibly telling one,’ she told news.com.au.
‘Just like the colleges themselves, these student representatives would prefer to ignore the problem of sexual violence altogether and pretend it doesn’t exist. To this we say that the time is long past to sweep this under the rug.’
The University of Sydney’s Annual Report on Sexual Misconduct revealed that 246 reports of sexual assault or harassment were filed by staff and students in 2023.
That number had more than doubled from 121 in 2022.
The University of Sydney students declared that ‘no one cares’ about sexual violence immediately after two women delivered a presentation on the topic
The 200 page Red Zone Report was commissioned and published by End Rape on Campus (EROC) in February 2018
It featured graphic photos, screenshots, police reports and stories from victims of rape and hazing from within universities’ residential colleges.
Lead author, Nina Funnell, and EROC founder, Sharna Bremner, said in a statement that the incident at the University of Sydney had ‘disgusted’ them.
‘To hear current students remark ‘no one cares’ as they laughed about rape and hazing is not a slap in the face to us as The Red Zone authors,’ they said.
‘It is a slap in the face to those who were harmed in the colleges and survived, and to the loved ones of those who didn’t.’
USYD Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Professor Joanne Wright, said an ‘immediate inquiry’ had been launched into the incident.
‘Any behaviour 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-aligned political group for comment.
