Province aims to ban probes of students’ sexual pasts
News comes amid a Spectator investigation into sexual violence at McMaster and how laws and policies need to change provincewide
The provincial government is pledging to ban post-secondary institutions from asking students about their sexual pasts — a protection known as a “rape shield” — amid a Spectator investigation into campus sexual violence.
One local survivor calls the news “amazing.” Critics say the province isn’t going nearly far enough.
The Ontario government announced Wednesday it is proposing legal changes that would ban universities and colleges from asking student survivors “irrelevant questions about their sexual history” and from punishing survivors for violating their institution’s drug and alcohol policy. The changes are aimed at reducing “fear and stigma,” the province says.
The news comes in the midst of an ongoing Spectator investigation, “Whisper Network,” into McMaster University’s handling of sexual violence. Throughout the investigation, survivors, advocates and experts have called on the university to review its sexual violence policy and on the province to strengthen laws governing such policies at post-secondary institutions.
The province appears to be heeding their calls.
“Our government has zero tolerance
for sexual assault and we have made that clear,” said Jill Dunlop, associate minister of children and women’s issues, at a Wednesday virtual news conference. “And with these new proposed regulations, we are also making clear that we have zero tolerance for blaming the victim.”
“I think that’s amazing,” said Victoria DePaulo, a former McMaster student and sexual assault survivor, upon hearing the news.
DePaulo previously called on the government to require all post-secondary institutions to implement “rape shield” policies — as they’re known in the legal system — protecting survivors from unfair scrutiny of their sex lives. She wonders, though, how institutions will determine which questions about sexual history are “irrelevant.”
Details aren’t yet available. An online consultation period on the proposed changes runs until March 15. After that, the changes are expected to become law.
McMaster says it welcomes the province’s pending changes, but they won’t change how it handles sexual violence. The university already condemns probes of survivors’ sexual pasts and it would “never” punish survivors caught violating drinking or drug policies as a result of reporting an assault, said Arig al Shaibah, McMaster’s associate vice-president of equity and inclusion.
The updates, however, would formalize McMaster’s policy.
Amber Dean, an associate professor in McMaster’s Department of English and Cultural Studies who researches gender-based violence, sees the province’s news as long overdue, lacking and even “offensive.”
Updates should also have included requirements that complainants are told the full outcome of investigations, that they have avenues of appeal, that “gag orders” preventing survivors from speaking out are banned and that time limits on investigations are imposed. Advocates, experts and survivors have long called for such action, Dean said.
“It’s offensive, really, because it completely ignores the many legitimate criticisms of the legislation and of the policies,” Dean said. “It’s shockingly appalling that such protections weren’t in place from the outset.”
Indeed, the measures fell far short of what a student group advocating for change wanted.
“We know that there is still more that should be done to strengthen these policies but this is a positive first step,” said Julia Pereira, president of the Ontario Undergraduate Student Alliance (OUSA), at the provincial news conference.
OUSA asked the province for a dozen more amendments to Regulation 131/16 of the Ministry
of Training, Colleges and Universities Act, including a ban on reporting time limits and a requirement that investigators receive sexual violence-specific and trauma-informed training.
Yimeng Wang, co-ordinator of McMaster’s student-run Women and Gender Equity Network (WGEN), noted that while the proposed updates are positive — reassuring students sexual history won’t be part of an investigation — students don’t always go through formal university channels after a sexual assault. Many turn to community support networks, such as WGEN or Hamilton’s sexual assault centre, SACHA.
“I’m more inclined toward requesting that the province invest more in community organizations and offer more opportunities for community based groups and activists to be able to support each other,” Wang said.