Australian Human Rights Commission Respect at Uni Interim Report December 2024 3.4 Impact of racism on students and staff The harmful impacts of racism are well established in the literature, with detrimental effects on mental and physical health 64 and contributing to poorer life outcomes. In the context of universities, the Commission’s initial consultations have highlighted the negative implications for students and staff, impacting academic performance, wellbeing, retention and progression. (a) Student experiences Students shared experiences of racism, leaving them feeling unsafe and unwelcome, impacting their engagement and performance at university. Jewish students impacted by protests on campus and experiencing antisemitism described staying away from campus and not feeling safe to attend lectures. This is supported by the Australian Jewish University Student Experience Survey, where 19% of respondents reported staying away from campus to avoid antisemitism, increasing to 27% of respondents who have experienced antisemitism.65 Jewish students also described the negative impact of antisemitism on their mental wellbeing, with one student submitting: Since the beginning of my university experience, the protests…have heavily affected my mental health and ruined my intended university experience… We want the university to acknowledge the pain and suffering Jewish students have faced since October 7th and, building on this, support Jewish students on campus by allowing us, as paying students, to enjoy the same experiences as other paying students, equally. 66 The Australasian Union of Jewish Students notes concern that these negative impacts are becoming entrenched: What we've noticed, and it's something that we warned about at the very beginning of all of this, is there have been behavioural adaptations in students as a response to what they have been facing. We saw it before 7 October, where students were already hiding their identity, but now what we're seeing is students aren't even coming onto campus. 67 Students also raised issues about access to special consideration following these experiences. Jewish students described feeling exhausted by the toll of recent events. 43