They are rarely reported to police, the young women preferring instead to carry on with their university life, or worse, leave defeated by the cult of college, fearing retribution should they disclose the crime. Of course, not everyone experiences college life in this way. Many thrive on it and love the social life, the instant family that residential living creates. ''Friends for life'' is often used to describe the most valuable, tangible thing many get out of college. Many more will experience outrage and disbelief reading this article, such is the faith in the inherent goodness of college. Yet behind the scenes there is deep concern about a culture that at times appears out of control. As the outgoing master of Wesley College, David Russell, says: ''These places generate and perpetuate a form of tribalism, which could be and is probably well described as sexist.'' Of his eight years in the role, Russell says: ''Hindsight is a good thing. I would have done some things differently.''

Such as? ''Acted against a certain student earlier. There was a boys' club mentality - I have seen it twice in the eight years I have been here, and the thing that I learnt is that you can never take your hands off the steering wheel otherwise the car just hurtles out of control.'' He says binge drinking is a big problem for colleges, and the fact that there are 13 licensed premises around the perimeter of the university often creates concerns. ''I have had a couple of incidents where the girls have reported an unwanted assault … and usually the girl decides not to proceed [with the report] because they perceive they would have to leave the college.'' If the assailant is a Wesley boy, he is not invited back to the college next semester, Russell says. ''In 2007 there were a number of boys who were not invited back … They sit in front of me and lie to my face about certain behaviours, and I hear from police reports and other sources completely different stories and I say, 'Sorry you are not coming back.' ''

The new master of Wesley College - its first female master - Lisa Sutherland, says she plans to tackle the problem head on. ''That is what I will be doing from day one. It is hard … You can be winning the battle and you have a whole new group come in and you almost have to start again.'' Russell says there is disagreement between colleges about the inter-college harassment policy, and that one college in particular is quick to reach for a legal team to get its boys out of trouble rather than force them to face the consequences. Indeed, the only college to respond to the Herald's inquiries via a letter from its lawyers was St Paul's College. It is also worth noting that the problem is no more or less acute at Wesley College - it's just that the leaders of Wesley were prepared to openly discuss the problem of sexual violence with the Herald much more frankly than other college leaders.

The principal of the Women's College, Jane Williamson, and the principal of St Andrew's College, Wayne Erickson, also acknowledge there are problems. Of the pro-rape Facebook page established by past and present St Paul's College students, Williamson says: ''These are shocking allegations and it is a matter of deep concern.'' She says some students had expressed concerns regarding an Orientation Week party, hosted by another college, known as the Rubik's Cube, which involves going to a party dressed in one colour and ending up dressed in another. ''We obviously want our students to have fun … but it should never turn into the sort of behaviour that is demeaning of women, if not illegal.

''There is a lot of alcohol involved at some of these parties, and we need to ensure that young women are properly protected in those situations. At the Women's College we have sought to encourage alternative activities during O-week which are not based on getting drunk - the events we host will be dry events.'' Williamson says she will be meeting the inter-college group organising O-week to talk about ''what we won't be tolerating here''. Is this about drawing a line in the sand? ''I believe so, yes,'' she says. For Erikson from St Andrew's College, a so-called ''chalking'' incident drew his attention to the potential for social events to go very wrong. ''I … share your horror and disgust at the blatantly sexist scrawlings which have passed for promotion of the student club's informal,'' he wrote in September last year in response to a letter from a concerned tutor over the ''deflowering a virgin: priceless'' chalking campaign.

He believes his immediate response and the high-level involvement of the leadership of the college's student club ensured there had not been a repeat of such obvious sexist messages associated with his college. Like Wesley College, St Andrew's is co-ed, but it has only been so since 2002. Erikson says the college has sought to ''modify the environment in St Andrew's to make it a more welcoming place, to address some of the harsher edges caused by laddish behaviour''. For those who have never lived the college life, it may be difficult to understand the attraction of existing in close quarters with 200 to 300 of your peers. The St Paul's website does provide some guidance: ''All the facilities of the college are designed to ensure that men have the greatest possible amenity and can spend as little of their life as possible dwelling on mundane, domestic arrangements. ''St Paul's allows the university experience to grow beyond the purely academic routine of lectures and tutorials, and to become true renaissance men in a modern setting.''

The 200 students dress for a formal dinner Monday to Friday in jacket, tie and academic gown. It is the only one of six residential colleges within Sydney University to have its own fully licensed bar. Cecilia (not her real name) has worked in residential colleges over the past three years and says she has been ''shocked and horrified by what I saw - I made a conscious effort to avoid the inter-college events because it made me feel so uncomfortable ''. She is aware of at least two incidents of rape in the colleges and many more times where young women have been put at terrible risk. ''In one incident, girls in the college could hear the rape going on in the next room and called the resident assistant, who used the master key to get into the room. ''The girl left college as a consequence. I don't know whether or not she went to police, and there didn't seem to be any consequences for the guy,'' Cecilia says.

It is a culture that permeates every fibre of residential life, from the college revues that feature storylines of the date-rape drug Rohypnol being used to help a male student get laid, to breakfasts where the students all wear white baseball caps inscribed with nicknames such as ''date rape'' and ''sloppy seconds''. That it is able to be played out so openly - on stage, in the large, ornate dining rooms, in publications and event advertising - is difficult to understand. Another woman remembers: ''I was grabbed in O-Week and held up against a wall as a joke. My boyfriend found the guy … and … threatened him not to touch me again. Their response was to leave drunken messages on my phone calling me a slut and a whore and trying to freak me out. I took it to the principal and they nearly got kicked out, but it pretty much tarnished my reputation there.'' Annie Cossins is a senior lecturer in the school of law at the University of NSW. She says consent is very easily eroded ''when you start throwing things in like 'she was drunk', 'she was dressed this way', 'she came on to me'''. ''It is very easy for men to throw this back at women … and girls do not tend to report because these men are acquaintances … It is much easier to report stranger rape.

''There is no recognition of the problem in colleges and there are no solutions put in place to help girls report.'' Only real leadership will change men's behaviour, Cossins says. As the young feminist author Emily Macguire noted in her book Princesses and Pornstars, rape-prevention education is possibly better targeted at boys and men than women. All the self-defence classes in the world won't help in the face of a culture that permits such behaviour. ''Am I arguing that girls and women shouldn't be held responsible for their behaviour? Not at all. If a woman drinks to excess, then falls over in the street, loses her wallet and vomits all over her shirt, she has only herself to blame,'' she wrote.

''But rape is not a consequence of getting drunk. It's a consequence of a man deciding to rape someone.'' IN HER OWN WORDS



Elicia, a final-year student at the University of Sydney and a former college resident, writes about the night she was raped in her room on campus. ''He came home with me … and once we were in my room, things began to get out of my control. "Making it to my college and to my room gave him a real sense of entitlement, which scared me. Obviously he thought once we were there, he could do whatever he liked - and it took me a long time to realise how unacceptable that was.

''I was saying 'no'. At various points I was in and out of consciousness. It was aggressive enough to leave marks on me. I had marks all down my legs and knees. It was a really, really demeaning experience. It was very violent. ''I never understood girls who kept quiet about rape. I always imagined that if I were in that situation I would march straight to the police station. But having something so invasive and awful happen in the intimacy of my own room, the place I felt safe, just knocked that sense of strength and self assurance out of me. ''A friend of mine, some time after that, said she had gone home with the same guy and implied that a similar thing had happened to her, and that it was a terrifying experience. ''I stopped feeling safe in my own college and my own room … and it did take me a long time after that to be comfortable with the idea of being close to guys. ''Certainly I didn't ever invite anyone back into that room ever again, and I was very wary and conscious of being on my own with any [St] Paul's boy.''

Of the pro-rape Facebook page, Elicia says: ''It is just so atrocious, but it wasn't surprising. It is part of the whole brotherhood thing where they think it is OK to share these awful things, as long as you do it together. ''So many people at various stages have tried to talk about this culture in a public forum but it is never allowed. When I spoke out about the culture of sexual violence … friends and colleagues turned against me and tried to stop me from saying what had happened. I lost friends over it. Loading ''It is a culture of cover-up. That is the most devastating thing. When you are trying to get people to understand the situation, people in college band together and it is cultish. It is this weird mentality that if you implicate one of them, you implicate them all.

''What goes on in Paul's stays in Paul's … Boys who are intelligent, rational and lovely to women in their own personal life will still step up and protect one of their own in order not to be excluded.''