Sexual harassment

The University encourages students and staff who feel they have been sexually harassed to seek advice and address the issue directly, either informally or by making a complaint.

What is sexual harassment?

Sexual harassment is an unwelcome sexual advance, an unwelcome request for sexual favours or any other unwelcome conduct of a sexual nature. The intention is irrelevant to the definition.

Sexual harassment may be a single incident or a series of incidents.

Sexual harassment may be verbal, for example:

• sexual propositions or persistent requests for dates
• unwelcome or improper remarks or insinuations about a person's sex life or private life
• suggestive comments about a person's appearance or body
• requests for sex
• sexually explicit conversations
• persistent, unwelcome social invitations or telephone calls from a colleague at work or home.

It may be non-verbal, for example:

• display or distribution of offensive messages or material either on hard copy or electronically
• displaying sexually suggestive pictures or pornography, screen savers and internet sites
• sexually explicit emails or SMS messages.

It may be physical, for example:

• pinching
• stroking
• touching in a sexual way
• familiarity such as brushing against a person.

Relationships based on mutual attraction or friendship do not constitute sexual harassment. If the interaction is consensual, welcome and reciprocated it is not sexual harassment.

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