2.2 Institutional Trust and Stakeholder Coordination Discrepancies
The operationalisation of campus gender-based violence (GBV) protocols reveals a structural dissonance between regulatory intentions and measurable institutional protection across tertiary institutions. Applying institutional safety governance frameworks to higher education environments demonstrates that policy existence does not automatically translate into secure educational spaces. As established in recent qualitative investigations, pervasive GBV across South African higher education institutions persists alongside critical deficits in institutional trust, where staff and students exhibit scepticism regarding the action plans of dedicated response task teams (W4388676031 2023). Furthermore, procedural ambiguity concerning stakeholder responsibilities and insufficient conceptual definitions within institutional documentation obstruct effective reporting pathways (W4388676031 2023). This institutional inertia reflects a broader global pattern wherein gender-based violence continues to affect university communities negatively despite escalating policy interventions (W4226478764 2022). To achieve substantive safety gains, institutional protocols must shift from symbolic regulatory compliance toward evidence-informed, contextually responsive, and person-centred prevention models (W4388676031 2023). When structural mechanisms fail to clarify the specific remits of administrative and pastoral sectors, survivor engagement diminishes, compounding the vulnerability of university constituents. Consequently, addressing the structural factors contributing to violence requires higher education leadership to implement comprehensive preventative strategies and understand the dynamics of campus harm (W4226478764 2022). Applying an analytical safety lens to these institutional dynamics confirms that verifiable safety gains depend upon eliminating stakeholder role ambiguity, establishing explicit definitions of gender-based violations within policy, and rebuilding community trust in institutional response teams.