College deals with sexual Consent
The party is raging. Two people are sitting on a couch. Both are drinking. He stands up, drapes her arm around his shoulders and begins to guide her to a backroom. It is clear that both are drunk, but he seems steadier on his feet.
What do you do? You could turn a blind eye — or you could choose to direct, distract or delegate.
Acting on any one of the three “Ds” makes you what is called “an active bystander.” Learning about how to initiate the three “Ds” was at the heart of the Consent Matters event organized by the counselling department at John Abbott College in Ste-Anne-de-Bellevue last week.
During the lunch break, a booth in the CEGEP’s Agora distributed condoms with catchy phrases like “Consent is never implied” and “Drinking is not a crime. Rape is.” Nearby, students chose from a selection of signs with messages such as “Sex can be magical. But not without consent” and had their pictures taken. The photos were then posted on social media pages. There was also a kiosk where students donned virtual reality headgear and watched a YWCA-produced video involving a young man and woman, alcohol and flirting that eventually becomes unwanted sexual bullying.
In the weeks since the #MeToo movement against sexual harassment broke wide open, JAC counselling department chair Julie Chevalier has seen the number of visits to her office to report incidents of sexual misconduct double.
“People aren’t minimizing their unease anymore,” Chevalier said during the lunch break.
“They are coming to us and reporting. We give them the tools to use in uncomfortable situations. Things they can say without becoming confrontational — something soft, to distract. Or, if necessary, something fierce.”
JAC director general John Halpin and academic dean Gordon Brown watched students lining up for the virtual reality experience while speaking to a reporter about the work being done by JAC’s Sexual Assault Response Team (SART).
The college has had a 15-page document detailing its policy on sexual and psychological harassment and abuse of power and violence in place since 2011. It was amended in 2017.
“We’ve have had measures in place for long time, but it’s good to remind students on a regular basis that consent matters,” Halpin said.
Last Wednesday afternoon, JAC councillor Meaghan Blake gave a workshop on consent and how to become an active bystander.
It was created by Chevalier and counsellor Antoine Beauchemin and first presented to the CEPEG’s 400 athletes at the start of the 2017 academic year.
The workshop is straightforward. The basics are reinforced. Consent is when the person freely agrees and says yes. Silence does not equal consent. When in doubt, don’t do it. You learn that one in three women and one in 10 men will experience sexual violence between 17 and 25 years old.
Most sexual assaults happen within the first eight weeks of school when partying is at its heaviest.
A whopping 82 per cent of assaults are perpetrated by someone known to the victim. And 64 per cent of assaults are perpetrated by men who have been drinking.
Statistics show that the number of assaults is reduced when bystanders intervene.
So what do the three “Ds” mean? “Direct” means intervening and talking directly to the person about his behaviour.
“Distract” means using a ploy to get the two separated and the woman to a safe place.
“Defer” means stepping away to contact someone who can intervene, be it calling someone on the phone or asking someone else in attendance to step in.