I am happy for you to mail me. However, I am not sure if I can be of any assistance. You see, I do not belong to Defence. I am a civilian and was an international postgraduate student. And research students like me are quite cut off from the undergraduate students. Our interactions were limited (if any) to lab demonstrations and teaching assistance. We do not live on campus (unless pulling all-nighters in the lab counts).
If I may be so forward as to opine - while what happened to the girl was criminally wrong and that the situation could have been handled better by her superiors I'd say that the situation at ADFA is not unique compared to other tertiary institutions in Australia. Freshmen at all universities go pub-crawling and the barely-out of-teens do stupid things with their new-found freedom, including inappropriate sex. Not all stupid things are equally stupid though. I almost got married when I was 20; the guys in this particular case thought it would be cool to film a girl without her knowledge. Obviously they went completely overboard and were deplorable in their stupidity. They should be punished for it. Perhaps discharged from military if not serve actual jail time. It would remind them that actions have consequences. It would serve as a deterrent to future pranksters who forget where the line is.
However, I do not see it as a systemic failure of any institution even if that is the most prevalent and juiciest narrative. I hope you will not take it badly if I say that the media has milked this scandal for all it is worth (and more) and maybe it is time to do a special on something more relevant like Will and Kate's wedding.
Update: I have since writing this reconsidered my opinion. I think there has been a systemic failure of the Defence force to properly deal with problems of sexual harassment. And SBS is not so much feeding media frenzy (some of the other media outlets did do that) as being a commendable watchdog on this issue.
If I may be so forward as to opine - while what happened to the girl was criminally wrong and that the situation could have been handled better by her superiors I'd say that the situation at ADFA is not unique compared to other tertiary institutions in Australia. Freshmen at all universities go pub-crawling and the barely-out of-teens do stupid things with their new-found freedom, including inappropriate sex. Not all stupid things are equally stupid though. I almost got married when I was 20; the guys in this particular case thought it would be cool to film a girl without her knowledge. Obviously they went completely overboard and were deplorable in their stupidity. They should be punished for it. Perhaps discharged from military if not serve actual jail time. It would remind them that actions have consequences. It would serve as a deterrent to future pranksters who forget where the line is.
However, I do not see it as a systemic failure of any institution even if that is the most prevalent and juiciest narrative. I hope you will not take it badly if I say that the media has milked this scandal for all it is worth (and more) and maybe it is time to do a special on something more relevant like Will and Kate's wedding.
Update: I have since writing this reconsidered my opinion. I think there has been a systemic failure of the Defence force to properly deal with problems of sexual harassment. And SBS is not so much feeding media frenzy (some of the other media outlets did do that) as being a commendable watchdog on this issue.
