Vice-Chancellor: Let’s be clear on sexual misconduct

In this blog, Vice-Chancellor Professor Robert Van do Noort explains how new staff behaviour policies and individual responsibility are vital to a positive culture.

The start of a new academic year can be a good time to think about how we can all do things better.

In recent years we have been working to put in place systems and policies to help prevent harassment and sexual misconduct. This is an issue that should concern us all, especially as surveys show that students are among the most likely groups to experience sexual assault.

Behind such statistics are real people who have suffered real, awful, experiences. Studying at university can be challenging enough without the added worry of harassment. I hate to think that students might come to our campuses with such concerns on their minds.

The Office for Students is making its expectations of universities and colleges around sexual misconduct very clear, and at Reading we have the same high expectations of how staff should behave towards students and towards one another.

Combating inappropriate behaviour requires a few different steps: an acknowledgement of the problem, clarity on what is acceptable and unacceptable, and responsible behaviour at individual level.

The University has taken steps to address the first two of these in recent years, but the third is down to all of us.

I have previously written on the responsibility we all, but particularly men, have in combating sexual harassment and calling it out where we see it. Our #NeverOK campaign, in collaboration with RUSU, has been running for several years and lists negative behaviours that are not tolerated in our community. The University has also backed a campaign to end the mis-use of non-disclosure agreements to silence complainants in sexual misconduct cases.

"No matter how good we think our own behaviour, we can help make things better across the University and in wider society."

These values speak for themselves but additional clarity on behaviour is always helpful. We have issued new policies this year on the use of social media, handling student complaints and, more recently, staff interactions with students.

I share the view of a number of higher education governing bodies that there is a clear power imbalance between staff and students that very often makes personal relationships between them problematic. Our recently-published Staff and Student Relationships Policy sets out some ground rules on this, including prohibiting certain types of relationships between members of staff and students in some cases.

The policy explains what constitutes a relationship (including business or financial as well as romantic or sexual relationships), what colleagues should do if they are in one, or have been in one, with a current student, and the disciplinary action that will be taken if these rules are breached.

I hope this makes it crystal clear what we deem acceptable and unacceptable. As well as having mutual safeguarding benefits, providing such clarity is one way we can drive culture change at the University and beyond.

The rest is down to you. And to me. No matter how good we think our own behaviour, we can help make things better across the University and in wider society. I believe that positive change is possible. The achievements of our diversity and inclusion networks and the determination of individual colleagues in fighting for what is right demonstrate that our community can be a force for good.

The confidence of students and colleagues in the University to take issues like sexual misconduct seriously and handle them appropriately is essential. But it comes down to how we as a community behave in all moments, large and small, making sure that people maintain respect towards others during meetings, brief conversations, teaching seminars or while buying a coffee.

A positive culture relies on us all, and benefits us all.