Editor’s note: This article has been updated to reflect changes in the executive positions held by co-founders at OurTurn National and its Carleton chapter since June, after talking with current OurTurn National chair, Jade Cooligan Pang. The updated article also includes statements from ACACIA, one of the fraternities trained by OurTurn, and includes the new stylization for the name of the organization.
The Our Turn National Action Plan—a comprehensive student-led initiative to combat sexual violence across university campuses—marked its first year of action this July.
OurTurn, the group behind the plan and originally known as “Our Turn,” began as a Carleton-based initiative, but quickly became a national taskforce that has since partnered with 29 student groups across Canada in training staff and students in sexual violence prevention.
Spearheaded by Caitlin Salvino, Kelsey Gilchrist, and Jade Cooligan Pang—the action plan was developed in the wake of Carleton’s 2016 Sexual Violence Policy, after the Ontario government mandated that all post-secondary institutions in the province create stand-alone policies on sexual violence by January 2017.
Prior to the policy’s passing, Cooligan Pang and Salvino, with the Carleton Human Rights Society, wrote open letters to Carleton that criticized the policy—which various student groups signed in support. The letters’ main criticisms of the policy included a lack of survivor support and failure to mention “rape culture,” a term used to call out a society that normalizes and enables sexual violence.
Cooligan Pang, the current chair of OurTurn National, said the letters were “quite successful.”
“After the letters were released, and Caitlin and I had participated in multiple meetings with Carleton’s administration, there was a separate taskforce struck in May of 2017 to address Carleton’s sexual violence policy,” Cooligan Pang said. “We realized that many other schools in Ontario, and across Canada, were facing the same issues we were. It is from this that OurTurn was born.”
In October 2017, OurTurn launched its national action plan by partnering with the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) to publish a 40-page document that highlighted the main principles of the initiative.
The document—named the Our Turn National Action Plan—scored 14 schools across the country based on their sexual violence policies, almost half of which failed to score higher than a ‘C’ grade.
According to the document, the policies were graded on a 100-point scale that was divided into five sections: general overview, scope, composition of the review committee or decision-makers, formal and informal complaint process, and education and prevention. The final score for each university was reviewed and approved by a student union on each campus, the document stated.
“After looking at the sexual violence policies across the country, we found a real gap,” Salvino, OurTurn co-founder and the group’s former chair, said.
Salvino added that her background in legal studies was what propelled her to find the errors in the legislative framework at the schools OurTurn looked at.
“We didn’t want to just criticize these policies, but we also wanted to advocate for change across Canada by working with student groups at a national level,” she said.
Since the publication of the action plan, OurTurn National has developed chapters across Canada and has separated itself from the initiative at Carleton, which continues to function as its own chapter at the university.
At Carleton, OurTurn has partnered with the Rideau River Residence Association (RRRA), the Carleton Academic Student Government (CASG), and the Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA). According to Caeleigh Wannamaker, chair of the group’s Carleton chapter, the organization has trained more than 900 students on sexual violence prevention.
“I think it’s amazing that the OurTurn program started here at Carleton, and that it’s now extended all over the country, especially given that it’s only been a year,” Natalie York, CUSA vice-president (internal), said. “It really speaks to how important this problem is.”
She added that OurTurn’s partnership with CUSA felt right from the beginning.
“Research has shown that when people experience sexual violence, the first person they usually turn to is a family member or a close friend, and obviously, not a lot of people are equipped to deal with that situation,” she said. “That was the real reason behind the initial training. We felt that all CUSA students and club members should be trained to deal with a situation such as this, in case it happened to someone they knew.”
Last year, OurTurn Carleton—in collaboration with the Graduate Students’ Association (GSA)—passed a unanimous motion at a CUSA council meetingthat tied Carleton clubs and societies’ funding to sexual violence prevention training.
The proposal stated that in order for clubs and societies to receive their full annual funding, at least five members of each group must receive training. Groups who do not meet this training requirement would only receive half of their funding after the first round, and would receive the second half of the money after completion of the training.
According to Salvino, the training included a 90-minute peer-to-peer session that provided information about consent, sexual violence, and rape culture directly applicable to campus events and student life. The session also answered any questions that participants had about strategies to help prevent sexual violence by being an active bystander, and approaches to support a friend who discloses a sexual assault, she added.
OurTurn Carleton also trained three Carleton greek societies in the past year: Sigma Pi fraternity, Tau Sigma Phi sorority, and ACACIA fraternity.
According to Carter Brownlee, ACACIA’s recruitment director, the training was important for members of the fraternity to understand the risks and dangers with sexual violence.
“When you look at how much of an issue [sexual violence] is at campuses across Canada, and how severe it is, we want to make sure we do our part and make sure it doesn’t happen when our brothers are around,” Brownlee said. “We’re committed, moving forward, to get more of our members trained.”
Brownlee said OurTurn Carleton has trained at least nine of ACACIA’s fraternity members in the past year.
Over the last year, OurTurn Carleton has also worked with CUSA on several projects, such as Frosh facilitator training and the creation of the “Consent Team”—a collaborative project with Equity Services and the Student Experience Office that informs parents and students of the resources available to them on campus.
Parents and students met with a team of 16 volunteers in September that educated them about consent, according to Jenna Lambert, the program co-ordinator of the Sexual Assault Support Services at Equity Services.
“A large part of the problem on campus was that students did not know where to go find the resources that are already available to them,” Wannamaker said.
Wannamaker added that the new 2017 Frosh training was a fresh change from the 2014 fall orientation, which saw some organizers and facilitators wearing shirts that said “Fuck Safe Space.”
“I still think that sexual violence is not something that is encouraged to be talked about on campus. And that can only change when students have safe spaces to do that,” she added.
Alexandra Lyn, a second-year architecture student, said she agreed.
“I think sometimes it can get confusing because people keep sending you to someone else, which is what they’ve been taught in their training,” Lyn said. “One of my friends had recently gone through something like this, where it got very confusing for her to know who would actually be able to help her because her [residence fellow] kept sending her to a different person each time. Events like these help with that.”
But for Lyn, the mandatory consent bracelets that were used during Frosh were treated like an accessory rather than an actual conversation-starter.
“Instead of simply enforcing a bracelet for students to wear during Frosh activities, I think OurTurn should’ve focused on ways for students to be given more hands-on tools with training and awareness,” she said.
For Wannamaker, the bracelets provided important emergency information that was vital in the “red zone period,” the first few weeks of school when the highest rate of incidents of sexual violence happen on university campuses.
“We don’t really have much control over what happens during the red zone period, especially in terms of reaching out to students,” she said. “Getting that conversation started, having those important emergency numbers, and knowing that people at Carleton are fighting to make this space safe is all we can really do during that period.”
York said CUSA plans to continue working with OurTurn during this year’s orientation events, and make use of similar Frosh bracelets.
Wannamaker said the current Carleton Sexual Violence Policy—unchanged since 2016—does not provide any immunity for students under the influence of alcohol or drugs when they were sexually assaulted. OurTurn Carleton is trying to change that.
“If you’re underage drinking, and you were sexually assaulted, you may be reluctant to come forward and speak about it because you would be worried you’d get in trouble for that, versus focusing on the real issue, which is the sexual assault,” she said. “[These clauses] would make it easier for survivors to come forward.”
Cooligan Pang said OurTurn National plans to develop training that specifically caters to international students.
“The definition of consent doesn’t directly translate into other languages, and other cultures and other understandings,” she said. “There are different myths for international students coming in to the country for what they can access and what they can’t access.”
OurTurn National plans to continue its work across Canada, while expanding chapters at other post-secondary institutions in the coming year, Cooligan Pang said.
— With files from Bianca Hacker and graphics from Mariam Abdel-Akher
Photo by Temur Durrani
