Jean worried over rape culture
OTTAWA • Michaëlle Jean, Canada’s former governorgeneral and chancellor of the University of Ottawa, suggested Thursday a ‘‘rape culture’’ is infecting the country’s campuses, and even society at large.
As the U of O president Allan Rock announced a task force in response to allegations of sexual assault and harassment involving students, Ms. Jean said some female students have complained of a “rape culture.’’
She told a press conference a troubling change seems to be taking place.
“What we are confronting here is a shift that we see in discussions that involve demeaning and sexist, misogynist and racist comments and words,” Ms. Jean said. “We are seeing this more and more frequently in Canada.”
On Monday, the men’s hockey program was suspended amid a police investigation of an alleged sexual assault in Thunder Bay; separately, four student leaders resigned on the weekend over a sexually explicit Facebook chat about Anne-Marie Roy, the head of the student federation.
“We’re announcing the creation of a task force on respect and equality composed of faculty, staff and students,” Mr. Rock told the news conference.
“Their mandate will be to provide recommendations on how to reaffirm that culture of respectful behaviour on campus so that everyone here, women in particular, can learn and work in an environment where they feel they are protected from harassment and sexualized violence.”
Those facing allegations of misconduct won’t lose their academic status, Mr. Rock said. So far, no university employees are being disciplined despite the time it took for university administrators to learn of the allegations.
While Mr. Rock called the allegations against the hockey players serious, he said they remain unproven allegations. Unless and until they are proven, the students in question will not be suspended, he added.
Ms. Roy received an anonymous email on Feb. 10 with screenshots of a private Facebook chat between five male students.
The conversation included references to sexual activities some of the five individuals wrote they would like to engage in with Ms. Roy, as well as suggestions that she suffered from sexually transmitted diseases.
Four of the five were elected student representatives who resigned from their posts on the weekend after a mounting outcry from their peers. The fifth male volunteered on occasion with the university’s Faculty of Arts student association but was not an elected member.
Ms. Roy has faced a backlash from other students since she publicly highlighted the sexually graphic online banter that was aimed at her. Some, she said, have accused her of blowing the issue out of proportion when she too described the problem as a “rape culture” on campus. But Ms. Jean said such a culture permeates all university campuses, and society in general, calling it a “disease” that needs to be eradicated.