Be safe, not sorry
College is a time for freedom and experimentation. And one of the biggest aspects of this freedom for students is of course, sex. But, with this new-found freedom come questions of consent, responsibility and sexual attitudes
College is a time for freedom and experimentation. But, with this new-found freedom comes questions of consent, responsibility and sexual attitudes
According to research conducted on behalf of University College Cork’s student magazine Motley in 2014, more students are having regular sex than non-students and most young people start to become sexually active when entering college.
Dr Pádraig McNeela, Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychology in NUI Galway and facilitator of the SMART Consent workshops, says that young people in college are going to have sex and explore that aspect of themselves no matter what. So while they should be mindful of consent and healthy and safe attitudes to sex, they should also be able to view sex in a positive way rather than as a shameful secret.
“Students will always be curious about that intimacy with each other. People coming into college just lack the knowledge around what is acceptable. There are four Cs of consent we deal with during our workshops:
“The first is confidence - students lack the confidence in themselves and use alcohol to cover this up. People need help with confidence in themselves to choose sexual contact without alcohol.
“The second is communication – if a student is in a situation with alcohol, they need to communicate clear consent with the other person, and the other person needs to understand whether they are fit to make those decisions. They need to talk it through.
“Third is community – students believe their peers don’t think consent is something that should be talked about and we need to break that perception.
“And fourth is change – our survey work shows that sexual harassment is commonplace. Other research shows 30pc of single students find it difficult to say they don’t want sex or they’re not happy with something. With continued support from the Student Union and our own workshops, we will be able to spread the knowledge of consent among students.”
The Sexual Health and Attitudes, Galway (SHAG) Report from 2017, found that 8pc of females and 3pc of males were sure someone had some sort of sexual contact with them when they were unable to provide consent in the last year. This was either because they were drunk, passed out or otherwise incapacitated.
Dr McNeela says his SMART consent workshops travel all around the country to try to bring awareness to the issues of consent.
“Most sexual experiences are very positive and I feel like students should know this. But, we are also trying to reduce sexual assault and harassment and change people’s ideas of the acceptability of certain behaviours. We believe that if people understand consent, there can be a reduction in negative sexual experiences and there can be a more optimistic outlook.
“We have been providing the workshops for the last three years. It lasts from an hour to 90 minutes with 20-30 students. We always start by asking the students to write down on pieces of paper what they think consent is. You usually get all the main definitions of consent here which is definitely a positive. But, then we go through some examples of stories which take consent through a grey area. A story where a woman smiles at the man as a form of consent, another of a same sex couple where the man has difficulty saying no and another story where the people had been drinking heavily for the entire day. All of these situations are in a grey area.”
Dr McNeela adds: “What we have found when we survey people is that most people think they should get clear consent before sex, but they don’t have confidence that other people feel the same way.”
A research report on sexual consent among third-level students, carried out by the NUI Galway SMART Consent research team, found that female students in particular had experiences of sexist hostility, sexual hostility, unwanted sexual attention, online sexual harassment, and sexual coercion in college. It found that this increased each year as they passed from first year to third year. Dr McNeela says this is because of a lack of knowledge on what is acceptable.
“We try to teach about the different levels of consent. For example, if someone asks ‘Should I get a condom?’ and receives a positive response, that in itself can be seen as verbal consent without having a clear yes. There are question marks around these things which aren’t cut and dry. But, having students know the questions to ask and to be in the other person’s shoes is what is important. That is what will help create a more positive outlook on sex for them heading into the future.”