WGEN’s Culture of Consent event educated students about consent and sexual violence misconceptions
cw: discussion of sexual assault
According to a 2018 survey conducted by the Council of Ontario Universities, 22 per cent of respondents from McMaster University indicated that they had experienced sexual assault since the start of the 2017-2018 academic year. Additionally, overall survey respondents indicated that the perpetrator was an acquaintance in 26 per cent of cases and a friend in 25 per cent of cases.
According to a 2018 survey conducted by the Council of Ontario Universities, 22 per cent of respondents from McMaster University indicated that they had experienced sexual assault since the start of the 2017-2018 academic year. Additionally, overall survey respondents indicated that the perpetrator was an acquaintance in 26 per cent of cases and a friend in 25 per cent of cases.
In response to the high rates of sexual violence on campuses, student leaders from universities across Canada released a sexual violence prevention report in August 2022 addressed to universities and the provincial and federal governments. The calls to action include creating education plans and implementing trauma-informed practices, focusing on survivors’ voices in institutional policy making and prioritizing a national standard for addressing campus sexual violence in the National Action Plan to End Gender-Based Violence.
Events like the Women and Gender Equity Network‘s "Building a Culture of Consent" are part of addressing the prevalence of rape culture and sexual violence on campus. The event ran on Jan. 18 as part of the McMaster Student Union Wellbeing Week. The event aimed to educate students on the topic of consent, dispel common myths surrounding it and provide sexual assault resources.
Rijaa Khan, a fourth-year student in applied psychology and human behaviour and an events executive at WGEN, believes that there is a strong need for students to be educated about consent, particularly due to the misconceptions that can contribute to rape culture.
“A common myth that people believe in is this idea that sexual assault only happens in alleyways or dark places by strangers. That was one of the main myths that [WGEN] had to tackle because a lot of the time, according to statistics, sexual assault happens by someone that someone knows,” said Khan.
During the WGEN event, students created a Clothesline for Resistance, with designs on paper t-shirt cut-outs that reflected their main takeaways from the event. Some examples of the designs included messages such as, "Rape is 100 per cent the rapist's fault", emphasizing the importance of holding perpetrators accountable for their actions and rejecting victim blaming.
Khan also discussed the importance of bridging the disconnect between sexual violence resources and students' knowledge about them.
“A lot of people don't even know how to file a complaint or report that something has happened to them because they don't know the [sexual violence] resources that McMaster offers . . . If we talk more about consent and rape culture, the resources can reach more people who need it,” said Khan.
“A lot of people don't even know how to file a complaint or report that something has happened to them because they don't know the [sexual violence] resources that McMaster offers . . . If we talk more about consent and rape culture, the resources can reach more people who need it,”
Rijaa Khan, WGEN Events Executive
Khan highlighted that WGEN has a Safe(r) Space program that provides students with peer support. The initiative aims to create a safe space for individuals that are seeking help, including survivors of sexual assault. WGEN also focuses on being a resource for survivors and connecting them to other sexual assault support resources in the Hamilton community.
Additionally, WGEN will be hosting a weekly survivors community group, open to students who are survivors of sexual, gender-based, and/or intimate partner violence.
Khan advocated for students to actively learn about consent and statistics on how sexual assaults can occur, in order to change their perception of sexual violence in university settings.
“I think constantly challenging your understanding of rape culture is really important. A lot of [students] formulate these ideas of rape culture and how sexual assault can happen based on the media. Another common myth is that everyone who gets sexually assaulted actually reports [the assault]. Very few survivors actually report and when they do, a lot of the time it gets dismissed by our legal system,” said Khan.
Khan encourages students to follow WGEN’s Instagram to learn about resources surrounding sexual violence support and education.
Against the backdrop of federal and provincial government efforts aimed at addressing sexual violence, McMaster University implemented a sexual violence policy in January 2017 and the Student Voices on Sexual Violence survey in February 2018. According to the McMaster Students Union, however, the university needs to take a more intersectional approach to the problem of sexual violence.
In February and March 2018, students at post-secondary institutions across the province were invited via email to complete the Student Voices on Sexual Violence survey, which was mandated by the Ontario government as part of the “It’s Never Okay: An Action Plan to Stop Sexual Violence and Harassment” legislation.
Included in the Ontario government’s plan are amendments to the ministry of training, colleges and universities act of 1990, which requires post-secondary institutions in the province to participate in a student survey pertaining to sexual violence.
The legislation also calls for Ontario universities to construct a sexual violence response policy and report on sexual violence and student support to the minister of advanced education and skills development.
“The plan is the foundation for a public education and awareness campaign on sexual violence, harassment and other unwanted and inappropriate behaviour. We launched this plan because every person in this province has the right to feel safe — whether at home, work or school or in their community,” said Yanni Dagonas, a spokesperson for the Ministry of Advanced Education and Skills Development.
The Student Voices on Sexual Violence survey was developed in consultation with members of student groups, private career colleges, public colleges and universities and sexual violence researchers. CCI Research refined the survey and approved it for pre-testing and focus groups in the fall of 2017.
In addition, since 2015, the ministry’s sexual violence reporting advisory committee has been giving the ministry involved with the survey insight about the prevalence of sexual violence at post-secondary institutions in the province.
The survey will be used to guide institutions towards addressing issues related to sexual violence and improve services, policies and awareness about sexual violence.
“The Student Voices on Sexual Violence survey is an important tool for gathering information from postsecondary students about their experiences, general attitudes, and beliefs related to personal safety and sexual violence,” read part of a statement on the website of the survey.
The survey will allow post-secondary students to report on issues pertaining to sexual violence on campus, including sexual assault, sexual harassment and sexual exploitation. Questions in the survey concern topics such as awareness of protocols and services available to survivors and students’ experiences with unwanted behaviours and sexual violence.
The implementation of the survey comes in the wake of the federal government’s recent promise to improve financial support for sexual assault crisis centres in Canadian post-secondary institutions. In particular, as part of its 2018 federal budget, the Trudeau government called for $5.5 million to be provided through the ministry for the status of women Canada to universities over the next five years.
Nevertheless, the federal government explicitly stated that universities that do not adopt “best practices” may have their federal funding stripped as early as 2019.
Although the Student Voices on Sexual Violence survey was developed and released in February 2016, predating the federal government’s announcement, the recent implementation of the survey at universities including McMaster has raised questions about the motivations underlying it.
However, according to Meaghan Ross, McMaster’s sexual violence response coordinator, the university has yet to be informed about what the government means by best practices. When asked if she believes that McMaster is implementing best practices, Ross said that the university has been taking a number of steps to support survivors and tackle the issue of sexual violence.
For instance, in 2015, Ross was hired as the sexual violence response coordinator at the university’s office of human rights and equity services office. In her role, Ross facilitates the implementation of McMaster’s sexual violence response protocol to address disclosures of gender-based and sexual violence, responds to individual disclosures and launches prevention and education initiatives in the campus community.
When asked if she believes that McMaster is implementing best practices, Ross said that the university has been taking a number of steps to support survivors and tackle the issue of sexual violence.
In January 2015, the university released its sexual violence response protocol, which guides members of the campus community to respond to individuals who disclose incidents of sexual and gender-based violence in a consistent and survivor-centred fashion.
Two years later, McMaster ratified its sexual violence policy, which stipulates the university’s commitment to addressing sexual violence and explains what options survivors and complainants can take to obtain support and disclose and report incidents of sexual violence.
Specifically, the policy highlights how survivors can take a criminal reporting route or a non-criminal one. It specifies that individuals who opt to take either a criminal or other path may have to attend a hearing, either through the university, arbitration or criminal court.
The policy also outlines Ross’s role, the importance of confidentiality, support services for survivors and investigation and adjudication processes that may take place should an individual file a complaint of sexual violence to the university.
“The start of 2018 marked the first full year that all of Ontario’s publicly assisted colleges and universities had a standalone sexual violence and harassment policy in place,” said Dagonas. “This milestone marks a crucial foundational step in the work we’re doing together to address and prevent sexual violence on campuses across the province.”
The McMaster Students Union, however, believes that Ontario universities need to be doing more to tackle the problem, something their advocacy team highlighted in their sexual violence prevention and response policy paper which was presented to the Student Representative Assembly on March 11.
The paper was researched and written over the course of the last few months and completed at the last MSU policy conference. According to the policy paper, the university should be bringing a more intersectional approach to address the problem of sexual violence.
“The services provided by McMaster University should be informed by a recognition of the intersectional nature of sexual violence, in which individuals’ race, ability, indigeneity and socio-economic status, among other factors, can render them vulnerable on multiple fronts,” reads part of the report.
The policy paper includes initiatives aimed at preventing sexual violence, such as inviting guests who help dismantle rape culture rather than normalize it. It also emphasizes the need for improvements to campus infrastructure, such as increased lighting at night, citing a Laurier University study that revealed that women and marginalized students tend to feel less safe.
The paper also calls for more accurate tracking of data, inclusion of specific data such as students’ demographic information, increased transparency with the public through the release of yearly sexual violence incident reports and the addition of counselors who are trained in anti-oppressive practices.
The policy paper includes initiatives aimed at preventing sexual violence, such as inviting guests who help dismantle rape culture rather than normalize it.
The paper argues that McMaster’s sexual violence policy lacks consideration of how the policy may need to be applied differently in the context of racialized men as opposed to white men as racialized men are increasingly subjected to racial discrimination in the judicial system.
“Traditional narratives of racism, and their role in propagating inequities in criminal convictions, must be acknowledged in the language used within the McMaster policy, and McMaster must further make an effort to propose strategies to address and prevent biased rulings,” read part of the paper.
The paper also argues that university should implement mandatory bystander intervention training and consider that institutions such as police services, which may be involved in a criminal reporting context, may limit people of colour from reporting incidents of sexual violence to the university.
McMaster has made strides in its response sexual violence. According to the research done by the MSU, however, the role that identity plays in shaping students’ perceptions and experiences of sexual violence continues to be overlooked.
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