Nina Funnell

And that was, you know, as back then as a tutor and as a lecturer and or junior lecturer, and I was seeing that.

The trauma and the impacts that sexual assault was having on students, and these were very, very talented students.

And, you know, students that had gained an ATAR of I think it was like 98.45 to be in the class in the first place.

And then they experienced sexual assault and I'm watching them

disengage from university, drop out of their degrees, and little things that our university could have done or that the colleges could have done, including things as simple as allowing a victim survivor to change bedrooms so that they don't have to sleep in the same bedroom where the assault took place.

It's not hard.

And I was outraged.

And I mentioned before that when my own assault happened, Professor Catherine Lumby supported me.

And I always, and because of her support, I didn't disengage from my own education.

I completed my education.

And so I became really outraged that

that now my own students were not receiving the same support, love and compassion that I had received and that I was watching them drop out of their education, that they had fought so hard to be there.

And so, you know, one of my very firm beliefs is that all people should be entitled to an education free of sexual violence.

But if sexual violence has occurred, then the educational institution should do everything in their power to help support the victim survivor and to keep them engaged in education.

So when I moved into journalism, that was that why that was my first project to do the 52 articles on university campus sexual assault, because I knew that that was like I knew it was a powder keg waiting to be ignited.

Yeah, so in that year of reporting, I was reporting across all 39 public universities in Australia and we did a number of freedom of information requests in partnership with Channel 7 and we found out things like of 575 reported sexual misconduct offences,

only six had resulted in an expulsion and that universities were more likely to expel people for plagiarism than rape.

And in cases where there was one case at one university where a student had admitted rape and his punishment was, I think it was a $200 fine and to write an apology letter.

And I mean, the cost of a parking ticket at that university was more than $200.

There was, you know, there were other things that we found that a number of the universities refused to comply with the freedom of information requests for their data around how many sexual