Sexual Assault Awareness Week is happening a second time this academic year from Jan. 21-25.
The events are a partnership between Carleton’s Sexual Assault Support Services, the Graduate Students’ Association, the Carleton University Students’ Association’s (CUSA) Womxn’s Centre, and CUSA’s Gender and Sexuality Resource Centre.
The week aims to help students on campus learn about supporting and surviving sexual violence. Some of the key events include Love Letters to Survivors, and an information fair on sexual violence.
The main theme of the week is solidarity, according to Bailey Reid, equity advisor with Carleton’s Sexual Assault Support Services.
“One of the biggest barriers that survivors have in coming forward to talk about sexual violence and to name their experiences is that they’re afraid of social alienation, or that they won’t be believed,” she said.
“So, that’s what we really mean with our message of solidarity—that we need to let survivors on campus know that there is a network of support available for them, and that they will be heard.”
Diana Idibe, CUSA’s vice-president (student services), said addressing sexual assault is especially important in universities because of campus culture.
“I think that it’s important—especially in light of the times that we’re living in right now—to understand that sexual assault affects almost everyone in some way, shape, or form on campuses,” she said.
“I also think that as a campus community, it’s an issue we can take on as a community.”
Lily Akagbosu, CUSA’s vice-president (student issues) who spearheaded the BeFOREPLAYask campaign in September, said Sexual Assault Awareness Week is a way of ensuring Carleton’s campus is a safer space that consistently provides support for survivors.
“I’m hoping the students recognize, especially this week, that it’s important we are all prosocial bystanders,” she said.
Safina Vesuna, the Womxn Centre’s administrative coordinator, said it’s important to remember that raising awareness about sexual violence on campus is not confined to a single week.
“In terms of trying to recreate the culture—in order to challenge rape culture, to challenge sexual violence in both campus and out in the community—and how it’s framed within the legal justice system, and how it’s framed in informal settings—is ongoing work,” she said.
“So just because we’re having events only this week doesn’t mean that we’re limiting our work to that.”
According to Cate Newman, a first-year journalism student, these initiatives are important to help students better understand the prevalence of sexual assault.
“As students, we hear the statistics a lot . . .but it’s not personalized unless you know someone that has been through that,” she said. “I think that can cause numbness to the situation.”
“Students are hearing of the prevalence of sexual assault in universities, but they’re not really applying that to their life, seeing how it could affect them, and how they should be working to change that.
“Awareness initiatives are bringing it to the front of students’ minds so that we’re being more aware of how we can work towards changing these patterns of assault on campus,” Newman added.
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Photo from files
