Borobudur Law and Society Journal

Ministerial Regulation No 55 of 2024 obliges every Indonesian university to prevent and handle violence, including bullying, through a task force, confidential reporting, protection and recovery of victims and administrative sanctions, but little is known about whether these duties reach student victims. This study asks what protection the Regulation gives a student victim of bullying and how far that protection operates at Universitas Muhammadiyah Magelang. It combines a statute approach with an exploratory online questionnaire answered by 15 self-selected students in August 2025. Fourteen respondents reported having been bullied, mostly verbally and by peers of the same year; ten said witnesses were present, but only three said a witness helped. Victims relied on self-help, such as confronting or ignoring the perpetrator, and only one made a report to the campus. Seven respondents did not know that the task force existed. The acts reported, such as mockery, insults, rumours and exclusion, fall within the Regulation’s definition of psychological violence and, when repeated within an unequal relationship, of bullying, whereas most of them lie outside criminal law. Protection therefore depends on the university’s administrative system. The findings are descriptive and cannot be generalised, but they indicate that the university should publish its task-force decree, procedure and annual statistics, provide an anonymous reporting channel, and link reporting to counselling and recovery.