NON-CONSENT EXHIBITION
GETTING the message across to students about consent is paramount to IT Sligo’s Student Union.
That is according to the Union’s Welfare Officer Laura Muldoon who attended the recent ‘Non Consent’ exhibition at the campus.
Speaking about the union’s approach to teaching consent, Ms Muldoon said it is something they have worked on a lot over the past year.
“The Belfast trial sparked a lot of interest in it [consent] and a lot of colleges have taken action from that. This year we ran our first consent workshop which was a blanket approach to getting first years thinking about consent,” explained Ms Muldoon.
She went on to explain that the hope would be in four years everyone in the college will have undertaken some form of ‘consent workshop’.
Ms Muldoon explained that a consent campaign entitled ‘ TEA’ was circulated across the campus.
“The workshop is very different to the approach that other colleges are taking. It’s a very informal approach that still gets the point across.”
The tagline is ‘Consent, it’s simple as a cup of tea’.
“It’s ‘ Talking before enjoying sexual activity’. We gave freshers a condom and a tea bag. That was how we spun it,” explained the Welfare Officer.
With 90 percent of freshers attending induction the Student Union took this opportunity to include a consent workshop.
“We got class reps to analyse the workshop and asked them what we can do better.”
She added, “This year we’ve been trying to get consent into as many of our campaigns as possible so we have drug and alcohol awareness where we’d inform students that you can’t give consent if you’ve taken drugs or alcohol, getting that message across. Just tying it into as many things as possible like, Sexual Health Week.”
In the coming weeks a mural addressing the issue of consent will be unveiled at the campus.