Last Wednesday, we launched our new guidance on how HE institutions should manage staff-student sexual misconduct complaints. The guidance is written in partnership with law firm McAllister Olivarius, who supported the launch, and we had a wonderful event drawing together the cross-section of people who are interested in complaints processes and who are also feminists (a surprisingly large group). You can read the guidance, and the first two in our series of briefing notes addressing key issues raised in our work, here.
We also wrote about the key ideas in the guidance for WonkHE, as well as a comment piece for The Guardian. We’ll be doing a webinar within the coming weeks about this for Culture Shift, and will also hope to address questions arising from it in future writing. The guidance has been called ‘radical’ by a commentator on the WonkHE podcast, which we take as a compliment. Indeed, if we are radical, so is the Equality and Human Rights Commission, which published technical guidance for employers on addressing sexual harassment in January 2020, and they are on the same page as us on many points.
I’ve also blogged for The 1752 Group about the Office for Students consultation; the UCL relationships policy ban; and HE institutions’ ‘duty of care’ to students, which you can read about here.
Dr Anna Bull 