Can universities use “Report and Support” tools or not?

Just 13.2 per ent of undergraduate respondents to its add-on to the National Student Survey (NSS) that experienced harassment in the past year made formal reports to their institutions, and just 12.7 per cent of those subjected to sexual violence reported incidents.

The age gap is a particular worry – only 12.7 per cent of under-21s reported sexual assault incidents compared to 86.4 per cent of those aged 31 and above. This matters because if only around one in seven harassment victims makes a formal report, universities are operating with incomplete intelligence about what’s happening on their campuses.

Maybe it’s because of what happens when they do report – only 46.7 per cent rated their harassment reporting experience as good, with women, disabled students, and LGBTQ+ students showing much lower satisfaction rates.

Improving reporting rates becomes a key challenge, which many have sought to meet via “Report and Support” tools which allow students to anonymously report incidents. But OfS has got itself, and its regulated providers, into quite a muddle over those tools.

When its Director for Academic Freedom and Freedom of speech was an academic at Cambridge, he said this:

“For instance, back in May, Cambridge published a list of “microaggressions” that could land academics in trouble with the university authorities, along with a website to allow students to report them anonymously. These offences included “stereotyping” religions and raising your eyebrows in the wrong direction. To his credit, Professor Toope rapidly disowned this policy following staff protests.

That built on DfE’s command paper that led to the free speech act, which was concerned over the following:

“Schemes have been established in which students are paid to report others for perceived offences.

Now that Ahmed is in post at OfS, his guidance issued over free speech includes a scenario as follows:

“University A promotes an anonymous (and not merely confidential) reporting process. Students are encouraged to use a portal to submit anonymous reports to senior staff of “microaggressions”, which is not further defined. The portal includes free text boxes in which reporters may name or otherwise identify the individuals being accused. University A says that it may take action against named (or identifiable) individuals on the basis of any anonymous report that it receives. It also says that even if it does not take action, it will retain all information that it receives for six years and may share it with external bodies (such as funding agencies).

It then says that the existence of the reporting mechanism and portal:

“…may discourage open and lawful discussion of controversial topics, including political topics and matters of public interest.

And goes on to say that to comply, providers could:

• remove the free text boxes from the anonymous reporting portal to be replaced with radio buttons that do not permit submission of any identifying data
• state the category of reportable speech more precisely and more narrowly, e.g. harassment and/or sexual misconduct as defined in E6.11k and E.611s of the OfS’ condition of registration, E6
• clarify in the portal that an anonymous report will result in no further action but is solely for data collection purposes.

Whatever training or guidance is given to students, some will regard what’s happened to them as harassment when it isn’t. And even if a single incident isn’t, a pattern might emerge that then amounts to harassment.

That’s why OfS E6 says that providers should provide support to students who report harassment and sexual misconduct regardless of whether the provider considers that the incident meets the “objective tests”.

But in the free speech guidance, OfS also seems to be saying that providers shouldn’t even allow students to report when they experience harassment that doesn’t meet the “objective tests”.

This is what happens when people have broad agreement over the need to tackle sexual harassment and misconduct, but regard racial harassment as a culture wars issue. Instead of providers being left to scenario plan the regulator’s response, OfS should offer universities unambiguous clarity over whether and how anonymous reporting of perceived differences should be achieved.