The Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) and the Rideau River Residence Association (RRRA) co-hosted the beFOREPLAYask sexual violence awareness week from Sept. 17-21. The two organizations have hosted independent sexual assault awareness campaigns previously, but are taking a collaborative approach this year.
According to RRRA president Jacob Howell, the collaboration is a way to reduce spending by sharing resources.
“What we’ve noticed from the past years when we hosted our own [week] . . . we didn’t have a huge turnout,” he said. “Rather than two different organizations spending a lot of money combatting the same issue, we decided to combine forces and tackle the same issue.”
Howell said that sexual violence awareness is especially important on residence because a lot of students in residence are in their first year.
“When students are in residence, it’s their first time leaving home; they are exposed to a lot of environmental factors,” he said. “There’s a lot of different things that happen when you do live away from home . . . things like sexual violence do happen on campuses, and I feel like that’s not something we need to hide behind.”
CUSA president David Oladejo also said a partnership with RRRA will ensure that more first-year students are being educated about sexual violence.
“We have students who are 17 or 18 coming into the university, who might not have had these conversations in the past,” he said. “This is just a starting point for a lot of our students, so we want to give the opportunities and those resources to engage, to ask questions and to learn more, and then carry that forward.”
The week was previously called “sexual assault awareness week,” but Lily Akagbosu, CUSA’s vice-president (student issues), said the name has been changed to promote inclusivity.
“In recent years, it was called ‘Sexual Assault Awareness Week’, but this year we changed it to Sexual Violence Awareness week, because sexual violence is a more inclusive term,” she said.
Akagbosu, the primary organizer of the campaign, also said consent culture is the key focus of the beFOREPLAYask campaign because of the diversity on campus.
“Campus is a very unique space where, unlike typical society, you have people of different age groups and different social backgrounds,” she said.
“It can’t be emphasized enough that consent is mandatory, and it’s important to understand that in the context of [diversity],” she added.
RRRA’s vice-president (administration) Sissi De Flaviis said that the campaign focuses on awareness because it is an important part of prevention.
“If more people are aware and knowledgeable, then we can stop all these bad things from happening to other people,” she said.
The organizations are predominantly collaborating on the week’s biggest event—a talk given by writer, artist, activist, and educator Kim Katrin Milan on Sept. 19.
The purpose of the talk, according to De Flaviis, is to acknowledge campus culture and its impact on how students perceive sexual violence.
Fourth-year communications student Venus Asadi said that awareness about sexual violence is necessary to create safer spaces on campus.
“[Campaigns] make students feel safer, and make Carleton a safer place,” she said.
Photos by Lauren Hicks
