If you’re doing a PhD, you could have an ongoing academic relationship with your supervisor for years. You could spend hours a week with them, one-on-one. So what happens if that platonic relationship turns sexual?

Universities Australia, a peak body representing 39 universities, will today release a set of guidelines on what should happen in that scenario.

“The supervisor has significant power over the student, Chief Executive of Universities Australia, Catriona Jackson, told Hack.

“If a romantic or sexual relationship does come up during that period, the recommendation … is to remove that supervisor from the equation.

“Just get a new person to come and supervise so that power imbalance is broken.”

Catriona said the university itself would be responsible for finding a suitable replacement supervisor.

“It’s not about penalising people; it’s certainly not about penalising the student.”

In other words - the principles don’t tell people who they can and can’t be in a relationship with. It’s more about making sure that if you’re in one, you’re not in a situation where your work is compromised.

Similar guidelines are already in play at some universities, Catriona said.

“There are a number of universities who have a similar approach to this, and we’re hoping that many others will pick it up in the wake of us releasing the principles.”

What about relationships between undergraduates and their supervisors? Catriona reckons they’re already covered by individual universities.

But different unis have different standards, and that can be difficult for students to navigate.

The Universities Australia principles put out today need to be adopted by each member university. The peak body can’t enforce them.

Sexual assault report: one year on

The guidelines were released on the first anniversary of the findings of a landmark report into sexual assault and harassment on university campuses.

The Human Rights Commission report found half of all 30,000 respondents had been sexually harassed, and seven per cent had been sexually assaulted.

Catriona said there have been 800 “major actions and initiatives” undertaken by universities in the last 12 months.

“This might be a respectful relationships program, it might be consent education for students and staff, it might be better access to specialist counselling if something terrible has happened to you, it might be all sorts of measures for making reporting more likely,” she said.

The National Union of Students is planning rallies across the country on Wednesday to protest what it says is a lack of action by university administrations.

NUS Women's Officer, Kate Crossin, told Hack the actions taken by universities were a "smoke-screen" because they were actions that administrations should already have been taking.

“Universities cannot expect sexual assault and harassment to just disappear. They need to start working with students and staff to change their campuses and make them safe,” she said.

The NUS says the initiatives themselves are good, but has concerns about the implementation.

"You can say you're upskilling counsellors, but if they're only available once a week, or there's a four week wait on campus to access them, then that's not good enough," Kate said.

She went on to say that universities had been acting unilaterally.

"We're sick of them saying they're consulting with students, when they've plucked one student from one campus somewhere and asked them their views," Kate said.

When asked why it took a report by the Human Rights Commission before unis acted on the problem, Catriona said: “We like to act on evidence”.

“Commissioning the Human Rights Commission to do a first of its kind investigation… gives us a really good amount of evidence to then base all the policy and procedure on.”