Tag: consent

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Concordia Student Union News

New policy will keep CSU representatives accountable

After two long years of pushing the new sexual violence policy through, it’s finally official

The Concordia Student Union (CSU) voted in a new policy with a survivor-centred approach towards handling sexual misconduct involving CSU representatives.

Following a meeting on Sept. 23, the new policy was officially put in place and acknowledged in the CSU bylaws.

This policy was initially voted on in the 2018–19 academic year; however, after a failure to enforce it in the bylaws and delays due to leadership issues, the policy has never fully been enforced. This situation is now rectified.

The policy pertains to any complaints that involves CSU representatives in matters of sexual violence and harrasment, stating, “Creating a Sexual Violence Policy (the “Policy”) will ensure that allegations of sexual violence involving CSU members are properly addressed and that every CSU member is made aware of their roles and responsibilities regarding the prevention and response towards sexual violence.”

Eduardo Malorni, the CSU’s Student Life Coordinator, spoke to The Concordian to explain the circumstances around which the policy was voted in, and the urgency felt within the CSU. Previous to this new policy, there was no way of holding the student union accountable.

Malorni said, “Other than handling it individually one-on-one, or trying to work it out behind the scenes, there was nothing [in place] for a student to make an official complaint against a CSU representative.”

Each complaint will be evaluated by the committee members, who remain separate from the CSU.

“The committee members are someone from the judicial board, a student-at-large that was appointed, someone with experience in sexual violence, an investigator/HR person that has experience dealing with this, and the last one is someone on the Standing Committee of SMSV [Sexual Misconduct and Sexual Violence] from the university,” explained Malorni.

This policy and procedure is very different from Concordia’s policies related to sexual violence. When there are complaints of a sexual nature to be made that do not involve a CSU representative, the university will be responsible for said investigation.

In addition to a new way of handling complaints, this policy also enforces a mandatory consent training for each representative. This training module was the main point used to delay the implementation of this policy.

According to Malorni, ”[CSU members] were casually mentioning how failing or not attending consent training [should not] be a reason to get removed from the CSU; they were implying it wasn’t an impeachable thing.”

However, most CSU representatives were very eager for the training, and saw it as an opportunity to learn.

“There’s always going to be a few people who think it’s a waste of time. Sometime[s] there are people who are generally curious and they ask questions,” said Malorni.

 

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News

The age of consent

Eighteen months after making national headlines with its action plan on campus sexual violence, Students for Consent Culture (SFCC) released its first retrospective report last Wednesday.

SFCC is a national collective of students dedicated to fighting campus sexual violence and reforming university sexual violence policies. The group supersedes OurTurn National, which was founded by a group of Carleton students in 2016.

The retrospective report was pushed after one of OurTurn’s board members abruptly incorporated the group last year. All other board members were fired in the process. Those students then went on to form Students for Consent Culture.

In October 2017, OurTurn published OurTurn: A National, Student-Led Action Plan to End Campus Sexual Violence. Released just one week after allegations of sexual assault against Harvey Weinstein were made public, the report quickly made national headlines. SFCC National Chair Connor Spencer credits the timing of the report with boosting the action plan’s public profile.

Spencer also said it was the first real attempt to identify best practices for university sexual violence policies. “The combination just sort of made it spiral way past the impact we thought it was going to have,” said Spencer. “We knew what we had created was important, but we had no idea people were finally ready to listen.”

Since the OurTurn report was released, members of SFCC have participated in eight federal and five provincial consultations on sexual violence. OurTurn’s chair at the time, Caitlin Salvino, was appointed to the Federal Status of Women Gender-Based Violence Committee. The report has been mentioned four times in the House of Commons.

The OurTurn report’s scorecard, which drew considerable media attention, assigned letter grades to university sexual violence policies. With a grade of D-, Concordia received the lowest score of the 15 schools evaluated. A lack of a proper standalone policy, the inclusion of a frivolous complaints clause, and a failure to acknowledge the existence of rape culture on campus, were among the reasons cited.

“Despite the extensive media attention, the goal of the report and scorecard was not to embarrass institutions, but rather to fill a knowledge gap in best practices for campus policies in order to empower student activists and advocates,” the retrospective report reads.

Instead of new grades for each policy, the retrospective report includes a template for students to grade their own schools’ policies. CSU General Coordinator Sophie Hough-Martin graded Concordia’s old and new sexual violence policies, the latter of which was released in December 2018. She gave the old policy 37 points out of 100; The OurTurn team had given it 52. “The initial policy evaluation by OurTurn was hyper-inflated, as it counted common practices that weren’t included in the policy itself,” she said.

Hough-Martin gave the new policy 52 points out of 100. “The only substantive improvements were that we gained 3 points in the section on education. Additionally, for the formal and informal processes [for handling a complaint], our grade improved from 5/30 to 13/30.”

“With that said, the document is still highly referential and reliant on other policy processes,” said Hough-Martin. “It does not stand alone as defined in the OurTurn: One Year Later report

Spencer said SFCC is working on new grades for each school, which will be released in fall 2019.”

The new report also includes a list of best practices for university sexual violence policies. Among these, universities must have a stand-alone policy. This policy must include rape-shield protections that prohibit investigators from questioning complainants about their sexual history. It must also acknowledge the existence of rape culture on campuses. Spencer defined rape culture as “a sociocultural understanding that promotes or enables sexual violence or the disbelief of women when they come forward.”

The anniversary report also outlines what shouldn’t be included in a sexual violence policy. Notably, it says that policies must not include a frivolous complaints section that discourages students from knowingly filing false reports. “Such a clause is likely to deter someone from deciding to file a complaint through the policy,” the report reads.

Policies must also not include time limits for filing complaints, or exception clauses. The former allow administrators to intervene in the complaint process to influence the outcome. Spencer said such policies are rare, with one example mentioned in the anniversary report coming from the University of Ottawa’s policy: “An exception to this policy will only be considered by the president in rare or in unforeseen circumstances.”

“Let’s say that a donor’s child is accused, and is going through a process and is going to be reprimanded. The president could step in and be like ‘nope, never mind,’” said Spencer.

The retrospective report lays out SFCC’s plans for the future. They will publish an evaluation of the changes in sexual violence policies across the country in the past two years. They will create a cross-country support network for students fighting sexual violence. In January 2020, SFCC will publish a national research report on predatory professors.

Graphic by Zeze Le Lin.

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Opinions

Aziz Ansari, welcome to the conversation

Graphic by Alexa Hawksworth.

The time has come to speak out, listen and change the discussion 

When I first read the allegations about Aziz Ansari, I was extremely disappointed. He was supposed to a good guy. A feminist. A social activist. An underdog. Yet, there he was being aggressive, inappropriate and supposedly unaware of his actions.

The allegations were written in an article titled, “I went on a date with Aziz Ansari. It turned into the worst night of my life,” published on the website Babe on Jan. 14. After seeing Ansari with a “Time’s Up” pin at the Golden Globes, a writer using the pseudonym “Grace” was set off. She recounted a date with Ansari after meeting him at the Emmys in 2017. She wrote about how abruptly Ansari wanted to have intercourse, and how he continuously put her hands on his genitals even after she removed them.

In her story, Grace claimed Ansari ignored her “verbal and non-verbal cues” indicating how uncomfortable she was during their time together at his home. Grace wrote that she still felt pressure to perform oral sex and allowed the unbearable experience to continue.

It would be naive to retrospectively say she should have just said no and left, because the pressures Grace faced are far more hidden, insidious and complex than they appear on the surface. This situation has brought up a discussion about consent, a long overdue discussion that has exploded in our society.

To me, what Grace described is a situation that lacked consent and empathy. However, this Ansari incident is so much bigger than the technicalities of sex being consensual or not. I believe arguing about consent in this situation should not be the focus, as it is clear Grace was feeling extremely uncomfortable, based on her recollection of the experience. We should be focusing on how to communicate during sexual encounters and how to encourage women to advocate for themselves in these situations.

Through my observations, I’ve noticed there was a great deal of hesitation to label this incident as sexual assault, by both men and women. To many, this situation may be all too familiar. This may be too close to home for women as it forces them to re-label personal experiences they thought of as just bad sex. Similarly, men may hesitate to reconcile their approach and actions—they might not understand that their actions have made women uncomfortable. Others have pushed back because of a perceived dilution of what assault really looks like. I’ve realized the movements #MeToo and Time’s Up may be more complicated than I originally anticipated.

In my opinion, issues with consent and sexual assault begin because of the hypersexualization of women in society. From a young age, men and women are taught to treat the female body like a sexual object. Men are taught about the “chase” and winning girls over with effort and perseverance. In media, women are often shown as unsure in their sexual encounters, and it’s supposedly the men’s job to change their minds. Porn, social media, advertisement, music videos and countless other media perpetuate this narrative.

Although sexual assault is a multi-layered, systematic issue, I think the media presence and the culture surrounding sex has acted as a catalyst for non-consensual relationships. We need to start thinking critically about how we can improve communication between men and women during sex. If we do not also examine the male perspective of the Ansari issue, and of sexual assault in general, we won’t be able to affect complete change.

For the first time in history, we are listening to and believing women about sexual assault allegations. It’s revolutionary, and it needs to continue. But I strongly believe we must include men in this conversation too. Not just by calling them out, but by making them understand their actions. Without trying to understand the complexities on both sides, we risk staying stagnant during this discussion and progress.

What Ansari did was bad. What others did was worse, and all of this is much too common, even among the “good guys” in our society. This is an opportunity unlike any we’ve had before. Not only are we calling men out, we are calling them in. Welcome to the conversation.

Graphic by Alexa Hawksworth 

Categories
News

Consent workshops for freshmen at Concordia

Graphics by Alexa Hawksworth

For many freshmen, frosh is considered the ultimate social event to kick off university life. With everything from friends to beer to sex to textbooks on students’ minds, the question of consent often falls to the wayside.

“Frosh is here to make you feel like you’re included and accommodated for, but we’re also here to make sure that that happens in a really safe way,” ASFA president Julia Sutera Sardo told The Concordian.

As sexual assault is prevalent across university campuses, ASFA has made it clear to students that Concordia’s frosh events are no exception when it comes to prevention. For the past few years, ASFA has required mandatory consent training workshops for all students attending frosh events. Currently, ASFA and CASAJMSB are the only two Concordia student associations requiring these workshops.

“Sexual assault happens frequently at universities, and we have to be mindful of that,” Sutera Sardo said. “If [students] don’t do the training, they don’t come to frosh.”

According to Sutera Sardo, the consent workshops are organized primarily by the student associations and Terry Kyle, who is ASFA’s manager of student life. The training includes modules on harm reduction, consent, sexual assault, bystander intervention, gender and several other related issues.

Another Concordia organization that is heavily involved in sexual assault prevention on campus is the Sexual Assault Resource Centre (SARC). According to coordinator Jennifer Drummond, SARC provides many services, such as delivering workshops and working with students to create campaigns on the topic of sexual violence prevention. The centre provides support services to survivors of sexual assault through one-on-one appointments, a drop-in centre and weekly group meetings. Drummond said SARC also works with the university to develop and implement policies on sexual violence prevention and response.

Drummond said she believes the implementation of mandatory consent training for students attending frosh has an impact on reducing the number of cases of sexual violence.

“I think the more people are knowledgeable about consent and how to have respectful relationships and communication, the better,” she said.

For students who might experience sexual violence at frosh, Drummond said there are many options.

“Those options can include calling the police, going to a designated centre or coming to SARC,” she said. “If someone witnesses something, I encourage people to intervene safely, when possible, and to check in with the person being targeted.”

Second-year Concordia students Erin Dunlop and Ben Fraser said they attended last year’s ASFA frosh and appreciated the mandatory consent training.

“You hear so many stories of sexual assaults happening at university events around the world. It was nice to see Concordia doing something about it,” Dunlop said. “Making it a mandatory prerequisite for attending the frosh events made me feel safer.”

Fraser said much of the training revolved around the presence of alcohol as a factor in sexual violence, as frosh events often entail a fair amount of heavy drinking.

“It was mostly focused on what to do in situations where consent is in a grey area,” he said. “People do stupid things at frosh.”

Dunlop agreed, saying she definitely sees the link between binge drinking and sexual assault.

“Predators prey on people who are vulnerable, and when there is alcohol involved, consent is compromised,” she said. “I was very lucky to have had a positive frosh experience, but I know that isn’t the case for everyone.”

While both of their frosh experiences involved being surrounded by binge drinking culture, Dunlop and Fraser said their frosh leaders were always checking in with them and making sure they were comfortable. They said they never felt forced to drink more than they wanted, and the leaders kept them out of trouble. However, Dunlop also noted there is always room for improvement in the trainings.

“Consent workshops are a good start, but there is always more that we can do,” she said. “There needs to be harsh penalties for people who commit sexual assault. It’s super important to focus on prevention, but we have to be careful to make sure the message is ‘don’t rape’ and not ‘don’t get raped.’”

While ASFA is constantly working to improve their workshops, Sutera Sardo said the most important thing Concordia can do right now is to implement university-wide consent trainings before frosh.

“I just hope that everyone is going to have mandatory consent training in the future,” Sutera Sardo said. “The more people get on board and talk about it, the better it is. Destigmatizing is what we should all be working on.”

Graphics by Alexa Hawksworth

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