Student activists critical of sexual violence legislation
Bill 151 follows accusations against faculty at Concordia and McGill
At the start of the first academic year since accusations of sexual improprieties rocked Concordia and McGill, all Quebec universities and CEGEPs are facing deadlines to start leading mandatory consent training for students.
The act to prevent and fight sexual violence in higher-education institutions says they must adopt a school policy by Jan. 1, 2019 and implement it no later than Sept. 1, 2019.
Bill 151 also sets standards on how each educational institution’s sexual violence policies are written, demands they implement rules on instructor and student relationships, and forces schools to create permanent committees to address sexual violence.
But while schools review detailed directions from the provincial government on how to comply with the legislation, student activists have already been critical of the bill, saying it fails to set up a procedure to independently review whether schools are meeting their new responsibilities. Many also say the legislation fails to define in clear terms what consent training should include and how sexual violence policies should be written.
“It leaves it to every university ’s interpretation,” explained McGill graduate Connor Spencer of Our Turn, a national student movement that focuses on addressing sexual violence on campuses.
Spencer said she was also upset students weren’t given any spots on a provincial committee set up to create the guide that post-secondary schools will have to follow.
The legislation comes as Concordia University and McGill University continue to deal with fallout from sexual harassment scandals that became public during the last school year.
Preliminary results from a recent survey of sexual violence at McGill described a normalized climate of sexual violence and misogyny at the school. Students and staff complained of recurrent power imbalances between students, faculty and staff, and slow response times to complaints of sexual violence.
Results from a similar report at Concordia showed women didn’t feel as safe on campus as male colleagues, and of the 1,595 people surveyed, nine per cent said they had experienced sexual violence on campus first-hand.
Recommendations stemming from Concordia’s report released this June overlap with the requirements of Bill 151, but also go beyond them, calling for the use of more external investigations when dealing with complaints of sexual harassment. Recommendations based on McGill’s survey should be released later this fall.
With the legislation soon coming into effect, Caitlin Salvino, who worked last year as Our Turn’s national chair, says she’s worried a lot of Quebec campuses will opt for Band-Aid solutions — like online articles — to teach consent and bystander intervention. The current legislation doesn’t mandate that students receive training in person.
Administrators at both universities said in-person training will not be feasible for their large student bodies.
“For now we’re starting with online (training ), just because the size of the student body is 40,000 people,” said McGill associate provost Angela Campbell. “We also have a consent week across campus every fall, which is led by our Office for Sexual Violence Response, Support and Education.”
Campbell said they ’ll be partnering with Concordia to launch an app next fall for teaching consent and bystander intervention. At Concordia, deputy provost Lisa Ostiguy said their mandatory consent training for students will include sessions that can be done online or in person.
But as recent allegations of sexual misconduct have targeted professors — in Concordia’s creative writing program and Philosophy department and McGill’s Faculty of Arts — Salvino says the lack of mandatory training for faculty represents a significant oversight in the bill.
“At Concordia and McGill there’s a huge focus on faculty, on sexual violence committed by faculty,” explained Salvino.
But while the legislation doesn’t specifically mandate faculty training, Ostiguy and Campbell told the Montreal Gazette they’ve started faculty training on their own initiative.
“Everyone in the university should understand how to receive disclosures (about sexual misconduct) and also I think the more people are involved in training the better,” Ostiguy said.
Bianca Tetrault from McGill’s Office for Sexual Violence Response, Support and Education said their office has been offering training for departments that request it.
Tetrault said the two-hour sessions cover power and gender dynamics, consent, the school’s policies on sexual violence, and how to respond to disclosures and report complaints.
Concordia’s Sexual Assault Resource Centre (SARC) has also been leading similar training sessions for faculty in departments across the school.
“It’s important for (faculty) to know we have a sexual violence policy, and that also there are these guidelines around staff and faculty and student relationships,” explained Jennifer Drummond, the co-ordinator of Concordia’s SARC.
“If there’s any kind of implication that something could happen to your academic career, or if there’s any threat that can make it so that you are in a situation where you’re pressured to say yes, that’s where power becomes very important to look at.”
At McGill, a manual for faculty who want to address campus sexual violence is expected to be ready by the fall.
Tetrault said all incoming teaching assistants and faculty will have consent and disclosure training added to their pre-semester training sessions. The online training sessions for students will also become available for faculty.
“We’re looking at creative ways to address these problems, so we can address, and unpack and undo the climate of rape culture and climate of sexism,” said Shaheen Shariff, a McGill researcher leading the university’s study on campus sexual violence.
That process includes research McGill is doing in partnership with 11 other universities in Canada into campus sexual violence, Shariff said, and the aim is that the study will “unearth, dismantle and prevent sexual violence within universities.”