Event Review

Let’s prevent and stop sexual harassment on campus together!

On 5 August 2024, the Equal Opportunities Commission (EOC) organised the “Play Smart” Joint-University Workshop on Addressing Sexual Harassment on Campus. As the universities roll out the orientation activities, over 40 student leaders, residence tutors and staff members supporting student activities from eight Hong Kong universities joined the event, which aimed at raising their awareness of sexual harassment prevention, in the EOC’s Office. They are now equipped with knowledge and skills in handling sexual harassment on campus.

At the opening, Ms Linda LAM Mei-sau, Chairperson of the EOC, stressed the EOC’s great concern about the issue of sexual harassment on university campuses and continued collaboration with the tertiary institutions to prevent sexual harassment.

During the fireside chat, Dr Ferrick CHU Chung-man, Executive Director (Operations) of the EOC, highlighted some myths and misconceptions about sexual harassment and introduced methods of preventing and handling sexual harassment through various cases and examples.

In the subsequent talk, Ms Susana SOO from the Anti-Sexual Harassment Unit of the EOC especially pointed out the importance of bystander intervention and encouraged witnesses to take actions against sexual harassment on campus with appropriate skills.

Participants also took part in the role-play, demonstrating how they would respond to the scenarios where sexual harassment might be happening in student activities. Dr CHU and Ms SOO provided their comments and suggested some follow-up actions according to the situations.

More cases were discussed during the question-and-answer session before the workshop concluded. All participants were awarded with the certificate mentioning their names as well as all eight universities to recognise the individuals’ and institutions’ collaborative effort in combating sexual harassment on campus.