Carleton will be continuing student consultations on its stand-alone sexual assault policy in the fall semester after pausing developments in June.
Policy developments were paused because of an additional requirement by the Ontario government that was released in May, said Carleton president Roseann Runte in an interview. Currently, Carleton has an established sexual harassment prevention policy but no sexual assault policy.
In an Aug. 16 press release, Runte said vice-president (students and enrollment) Suzanne Blanchard will now be in charge of the policy creation process.
The policy being developed was created in order to fulfill a requirement by the provincial government for all post-secondary schools to implement a sexual assault policy by January 2017. The additional requirement is to include a well-defined protocol for schools to follow in response to reports of sexual assault by a student or faculty member.
After consultations throughout the 2015-16 school year, a policy draft was created in May by Carleton’s Equity Services with the help of Joan Riggs, a third-party consultant. However, Riggs resigned on May 16 because she said it was difficult for those who were a part of the discussion to see eye-to-eye.
“I mostly just felt that I couldn’t help Carleton to move forward with the differences that are in the stakeholders group,” Riggs said.
The draft outlines a survivor-focused approach as one of the policy principles and gives four specific procedures for school community members to follow in response to sexual violence. It also expresses a commitment to reviewing the policy every six months.
The draft acknowledges that “addressing sexual violence requires a commitment to systemic change” and mentions a commitment to ending rape culture and building a culture of consent in accordance with the provincial government.
According to Graduate Students’ Association (GSA) president Debbie Owusu-Akyeeah, the pause on developments was a result of disagreement between the various stakeholders.
“Obviously [the policy] has been a headache for all of us,” she said. “All of the things that we are demanding administration doesn’t want to include or they don’t agree.”
Since May, Owusu-Akyeeah said the GSA has been reviewing the draft policy and consulting service centres and clubs and societies that deal specifically with racialized and minority students about the policy.
Owusu-Akyeeah also emphasized the importance of providing preventative resources about sexual violence to school community members.
Carleton PhD student and chair of the CUPE 4600 Women’s Caucus, Lauren Montgomery, said the draft’s inclusion of the term “rape culture” and making the policy survivor-centred were a particular points of contention.
“The acknowledgement of rape culture is really important because once we acknowledge that, we have that really difficult discussion,” Montgomery said, “then we can move towards a culture based on consent.”
“[The policy] is clearly a priority for the union and we’ve been disappointed with how the process has fallen apart, with how stakeholders have been treated,” Montgomery said, referencing a heated stakeholders meeting that happened in March.
Montgomery said CUPE 4600 wants the policy to recognize sexual violence in the workplace and provide training on consent and on responding to sexual violence for all staff, employees, and students.
According to the Ottawa Citizen, a May 6 email addressed to Roseann Runte and signed by 23 faculty members in the department of sociology and anthropology expressed frustration about how they were not given the opportunity to contribute to the development process.
Carleton will begin their new round of consultations after taking time to review the government requirements for the sexual assault policy, according to the Citizen.
The university had been doing consultations with smaller student groups during August and will be doing larger consultations once the school year starts, Blanchard said.
According to Director of Student Affairs Jen Sugar, the next draft of the policy will be made public and open for feedback online. She said these consultations will be “very open-ended.”
“Whatever aspects of a policy anyone wants feedback on, we’re willing to hear,” Sugar said.
“The draft that was released in May is going to inform our thinking around writing a new draft,” she said, “but there’s going to be a variety of other things that’ll form our thinking regarding the new draft.”
Sugar said a new draft of the policy will hopefully be presented to the Board of Governors in November 2016 for approval.
