The support that students receive from their university when they have experienced violence and sexual assault is a serious matter and a proper subject for journalistic inquiry. Unfortunately, your report (27 July) cites an example from several years ago to give a picture of our student counselling service that does not tally with the overwhelmingly positive feedback we get from students about the expertise, professionalism and genuine care that our clinical staff provide.
Sexual violence and its handling on campus is something we take very seriously, as clearly do you. Hence our concern that such accounts, suggesting that the university’s clinical practitioners are failing their institutional duty of pastoral care, may deter exactly those students who most need the expert support and guidance that is available to them from seeking it.
Professor Sally Mapstone
Pro-vice chancellor, Education, Oxford University
• Despite the assertions of your correspondent (Letters, 29 July), the reality is the NUS’s finding that one in seven female students are assaulted during their period of study, and there is confusion as to what policy and practice is even lawful. Our experience talking to student activists and student survivors around the country is that universities are commonly completely unprepared for dealing with sexual assault – even though they cater for the section of the population that is most victimised. Sexual violence support services are regularly talking to students who have encountered victim-blaming and a refusal to investigate when assaults have been reported at universities, including Russell Group members.
The End Violence Against Women Coalition published a legal briefing in January which examined universities’ and colleges’ obligations to protect female students, but it seems to be commonplace for universities, including Russell Group members, to be still relying on the 1994 Zellick guidelines, which predate the Human Rights Act and are arguably unlawful. It all adds up to a culture of impunity, which is likely to be known by those who perpetrate assaults. Some individual universities have to date met with student activists and agreed to look at their policies and practices. But the universities’ representative bodies have so far been impervious. This issue will not go away. In the US, the failure of universities led eventually to federal government intervention. We urge the whole further and higher education sector to act now and ensure female students have equal access to their education.
Sarah Green Acting director, End Violence Against Women Coalition
Dr Fiona Vera Gray Operations coordinator, Rape Crisis South London
