CANBERRA, Australia — Female students who have spoken out about sexual assault and harassment on Australian university campuses have returned to their dorm rooms to find them flooded with water.

Others came home to defaced dorm doors or mattresses that had been urinated on.

When Emily Jones, a third-year student, asked a group of men to stop encircling women during a barroom tradition — in which men drop their pants and sing when the Australian song “Eagle Rock” is played — she was ostracized by friends and condemned by the news media for joining the “fun police.”

“Rather than being happy to make a compromise because so many women were feeling unsafe, they’d rather just keep having a good time,” Ms. Jones, 22, said in an interview on campus here. “I was very disheartened.”

Australia has some of the highest rates of reported sexual assault in the world, according to the United Nations, and over the past year a steady stream of on-campus assaults, ritualized misogyny and cruel retaliation have prompted a national conversation about gender, power and accountability.