"The stars change, the mind remains the same."
This is the (low credit at best) translation of the University of Sydney's Latin motto, "sidere mens eadem mutato".
![St Paul's College at Sydney University.](/web/20161119000743im_/http://www.theage.com.au/content/dam/images/g/s/r/t/5/e/image.related.articleLeadwide.620x349.gss7el.png/1479447006053.jpg)
At its establishment, the University of Sydney was to be Oxford and Cambridge under a Southern Cross. With its sandstone architecture, academic rigour and alumni list, the comparison is evident.
But, there is a key difference between the University of Sydney and its northern hemisphere counterparts.
At Oxford and Cambridge (not to mention the US higher education system), on-campus residence is the backbone of student life.
At the University of Sydney, it is not.
Of the University's 32,000 undergraduate students, a generous estimate would suggest 1500 live at colleges. That figure includes students who attend classes at the nearby University of Technology, and other local universities.
The rest of the students live off campus. This does not mean they are not involved in campus life, but rather that they – for reasons financial, practical, (and, in light of the recent stories of sexual assault and misconduct) possibly ethical – direct revues, lead student unions, play representative sport and earn degrees while living somewhere else.
It is hard to argue that the University of Sydney's colleges are not privileged institutions. With annual fees comparable to those of the private schools from which most of their residents are drawn (an academic year at St Paul's College comes at just under $25,000), even the scholarship programs on offer and the number of rural and international students in attendance do little to challenge that the average college student is rich and white.
And, yet, when it comes to our discussion of campus sexual assault, this tiny, privileged community has become the focus.
This week, there was outrage when it was revealed St Paul's College, the University's last remaining all-male residence, had declined to sign up to a review of college culture led by former sex discrimination commissioner Elizabeth Broderick.
But the University's taskforce to overhaul culture within the colleges appears to be little more than PR-friendly window dressing.
As St Paul's have demonstrated this week, any involvement in a "cultural review" program is really just a gesture of good will. The colleges are managed entirely independently of the University (St Paul's College Council is a 19-person body established by statute, which must include six members of the Anglican clergy). Short of the University deciding to disaffiliate, even for the colleges who do participate, there are really no consequences for non-compliance.
College sexual assault is also an easy write-up for the media, who know this narrative from US tales like the Brock Turner rape trial and the Columbia University mattress protest. It fits a Hollywood narrative of campus life: fraternities and sororities, football games and dorms.
We know that this is not what university looks like for most Australian students. So, why is this what we expect campus sexual assault to be?
When a student is sexually assaulted at a wrap party for a drama society production up the road from campus, is that campus sexual assault? What about if a similar celebration is occurring after the end of exams at someone's childhood home a train trip away? For most of the student body, these places are where their campus community congregates: (ironically) off campus.
It should go without saying that all sexual assault is bad and any attempt to stop sexual assault on campus is good. With the headlines that continue to come out of the University of Sydney's colleges, their culture is surely in need of review.
But while we should be upset about a group of 150 men getting to skip whatever Broderick has planned, we should also be upset about Australian universities failing entire campuses when it comes to sexual assault.
Be upset that, until the Vice-Chancellor was informed of the oversight during a public Q&A; session in May, to report a campus sexual assault students were required to give their full name, as well as make their report through a generic website form also used for allegations of academic misconduct which asked students if they had "taken any steps to resolve the matter" themselves. (A new system is being launched in 2017, and a phone hotline has since been introduced, after previously only being available for staff.)
Be upset that the University of Sydney's SRC legal team has been so inundated with sexual assault cases that they are calling for the University to fund a dedicated sexual assault solicitor.
And be upset that the University's own projection data estimates that there have been 340 unreported sexual assaults within its community each year for the past five years, yet their current focus is a non-committal solution that will, at its most effective, touch the lives of less than five per cent of its students.
Treating adults like naughty boarding school pupils for a story in the paper is one thing, showing a commitment to a cultural change that will stop the sexual assault of students, regardless of where they live or how much their parents earn, is another.
Mary Ward is a Fairfax journalist and student at Sydney University.