Carleton will restart consultations on its sexual assault policy with students and on-campus groups during the Fall semester. This is after work on the policy was “paused” over the summer and the consultant in charge of talks between the university and stakeholders resigned because groups could not agree. In particular, groups disagreed over the term “rape culture” being used.
With the chance to start again, Carleton should be consulting as broad a cross-section of the student body as possible. The sexual assault policy is too important to get wrong and affects the entire student population.
Holding consultation meetings is a good step but only the loudest voices will be heard. Despite the importance of the policy, not everyone has the time to physically come out to meetings. For this reason, the university should survey all students on what should go in to the policy and how it should work. This could be done most easily through an online survey where every student can share their concerns. By using both written questions and surveys, students can have their needs met.
By surveying the student body, the university will be able to better gauge the concerns and what is important to everyone by looking at common trends in the results.
With this information, proper action can be taken that addresses as many people as possible. Consulting with stakeholders and experts is one of the most important parts of creating this policy, but the voices of regular students should not be discounted or taken lightly, as the policy is made for them.
