- Equal Opportunities Commission ‘deeply concerned’ about sexual harassment reports in recent years, calls for mandatory training for student organisers
- Legislators say there is need for ‘cultural reform’ as well as harsher penalties for offenders
Hong Kong lawmakers call for stronger stance on “licensed sexual harassment” at university orientation camps. Photo: Dickson LeeHong Kong universities’ orientation camps have been denounced as having deteriorated into “licensed collective sexual harassment”. Lawmakers have reached out to the city’s equality watchdog to improve supervision of the events as the summer holiday approaches.
The calls were made as legislators were briefed by the Equal Opportunities Commission on prevention of sexual harassment on campuses at a panel meeting on Monday.
Commission chairwoman Linda Lam Mei-sau told the panel her agency was “deeply concerned” about reports of sexual harassment incidents at orientation camps in recent years.
Lam said: “To prepare for the orientation activities in summer this year, we sent letters to tertiary institutions in April, calling on them to require students who are in charge of planning and executing orientation activities to receive anti-sexual harassment training.
“We also offered to support them in delivering the training.”
Lawmaker Tang Fei of the Federation of Education Workers said stronger law enforcement and harsher penalties were needed to deal with the normalisation of sexual harassment at universities.
He noted that this was not a serious problem in primary or secondary schools, but had “developed into a culture” at university orientation camps, calling them “an occasion for licensed collective sexual harassment”.
“It is not the usual sexual harassment cases we talk about in workplace. It is collective, as if it is an unwritten rule of orientation camps that there will be sexual harassment,” Tang said. “We need cultural reform.”
Another lawmaker, Paul Tse Wai-chun, echoed Tang’s points, saying: “Students should not be allowed uncontrolled freedoms.”
To deal with the problem, universities should require students to submit their planned orientation activities for approval in advance, he suggested.
40% of Hong Kong teachers deregistered last year were due to sexual crimes
Citing a 2019 agency survey, Lam said many students did not understand what constituted sexual harassment and thus did not make complaints, while others did not know where to do so.
She said the commission had put forward a series of recommendations to universities, including offering compulsory training to incoming students during the orientation programme; appointing a senior staff member to oversee matters of sexual harassment; and setting up a centralised complaint hotline that also promoted counselling services.
Lam said she was satisfied that most of the recommendations had been adopted and implemented by institutions, adding that the commission had developed an online anti-sexual harassment training course for university students and staff since late 2022.
Lawmaker Yim Kong suggested the commission impose standardised guidelines for all tertiary institutions to ensure consistent implementation. But Lam said universities should be allowed to work out measures to suit their individual needs.
Public concerns about orientation activities at universities has risen in recent years after media reports of suspected sexual harassment cases during such events.
A second-year student at the University of Hong Kong was arrested and charged for groping a first-year at an orientation event last year, but was acquitted by a court earlier this month.
The court ruled there was insufficient evidence to conclusively identify him as the perpetrator, even though it believed the testimonies of the victim and a witness to be truthful.
There were also reports that some students played kissing games during a Lingnan University orientation event last year, while allegations of rape and voyeurism arose at the event held by Education University last year.
Lingnan University has since placed stricter controls on student-led orientation activities, with events this year vetted by the university and organisers told those events could not bear the words “orientation camp” or “orientation activities”.