A damning new article has blasted the University of Sydney‘s prestigious St Andrew’s College for what is an alleged toxic culture of sexism, racism, sexual assault and bullying – essentially, the very worst things you could get when lumping a bunch of freshly minted 18-year-olds under one roof with buckets of alcohol and no supervision.
It follows not one but two recent incidences of USyd students (this time from Wesley College) being monumental shit bags; the first, a slut-shaming journal, the second, harassment of sex workers.
But this new article is about St Andrew’s, because lest the douche-baggery discriminate. Published by student magazine Honi Soit, the piece begins with a story about a student, Kendra Murphy, who had her alleged sexual assault broadcast over the PA system in 2014 – and very quickly degenerates from there.
It paints an environment that regularly slut-shames women while simultaneously putting them in environments where the entire aim is too encourage hook-ups (see: Fresher Fishing). And as author Justine Landis-Hanley says, “it’s very difficult to opt out of a culture when you live there.”
In fact, Landis-Hanley didn’t even have the space to include all the stories she was sent for the article.
“One student sent me pictures of a burnt gay pride flag that was found lying on the St. Andrew’s grounds amidst beer cans after their formal party last year,” she said.
“Another showed me how their student food representatives start their weekly report with an Islamic peace greeting, something that most people would see as disrespectful cultural appropriation.”
The piece went live yesterday, and she’s says plenty of past and present college students have written to thank her for shedding light on these practises.
“This piece is not an attack on the individual – it is an attack on an environment that compels people to behave in certain ways, and subject others to this behaviour,” she said.“How we enact change within the aforementioned institutions is a dilemma fraught with difficulty; It would require overturning years of action and inaction that has been continually justified as ‘tradition’.
“These colleges need to investigate their own systemic sanctioning of dangerous behaviours and take the appropriate steps to combat them.”
PEDESTRIAN.TV has reached out to the university for comment. We’ll update when they get back to us.
Source: Honi Soit.
Photo: Facebook / University of Sydney.
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