A Carleton student-run sexual violence peer support hotline is recruiting volunteers from more faculties than ever before after demand for its services increased exponentially last year.
Volunteers at the Carleton Sexual Assault Peer Support Line offer anonymous callers a listening ear and direct them to local resources to deal with their trauma if they need further support, Emily Minor, the executive officer of the line, said.
According to her, the hotline is a Carleton University Students’ Association (CUSA) club that was created in 2010 after Carleton’s response to the 2007 “Jane Doe” sexual assault case was criticized and resulted in a negligence lawsuit from the complainant.
Minor said she sent out a mass email to all Carleton faculties a few weeks ago and has received approximately 130 responses to the hotline’s recruitment questionnaire. She said they are hoping to recruit 60 new volunteers from the applicants to add to about 23 returning staff.
“This is the first year that we’ve actually sent applications to all of the faculties, so prior to that it was more generalized towards the typical streams like criminology, sociology, psychology, neuroscience, social work . . .” Minor said.
Erin Scott, the vice-president (public relations) of the hotline, said the group has received a “much bigger response than normal” during recruitment this year.
“People see statistics and that’s one thing or attend sexual violence training, but I feel like this year there’s been a resurgence of ‘oh yeah, this actually happens on campus,’ ” Scott said.
She added that the recruitment survey asks students about their stances on topics such as male sexual violence survivors, feminism, and transgender rights.
“You can’t pick and choose your callers. We are not okay with a policy of ‘oh, sorry, I don’t believe that transgender individuals can be assaulted so I can’t take this call.’ That’s not our policy. So we need people to be aware that there’s a broad spectrum of callers and we don’t want a caller calling in and getting an unresponsive volunteer,” Scott explained.
Minor said it’s important that volunteers recognize the intersectionality that plays into sexual assault survivors’ experiences.
“There are so many people that have different struggles. They experience different things because of who they are and I think that’s really important. People need to be cogniscent of that in recognizing that not everyone’s the same and you can’t judge others on your different position,” she said.
Scott said student volunteers often receive calls from many groups of people, including Carleton faculty, staff, graduate and undergraduate students. She said the line is forwarded to volunteers’ personal phones so they can take calls at home or in another quiet location. Scott and Minor both said the number of calls is inconsistent, with morning and afternoon shifts seeming to be the most popular time for callers.
Victoria Heppenheimer, a fourth-year criminology and criminal justice student in her second year of volunteering for the hotline, said she received approximately two calls each week during the 2016-17 academic year.
“I know a lot of volunteers who have been on the line for their shifts and they’ve never gotten a call and then there’s other people who have had their shifts and they get multiple calls so I think it just really depends. There’s no real pattern,” Heppenheimer said.
Scott said volunteers are trained to empathize rather than sympathize with callers and to direct them to the appropriate resources rather than providing advice. According to Scott, conversations often go beyond sexual assault, ranging from partner violence to difficulties in long-term relationships.
Harar Hall, a co-ordinator with CUSA’s Womyn’s Centre, said the centre directs sexual violence survivors to the support line if they require additional support outside of centre hours. She said peer support offers sexual violence survivors an alternative approach to that of the university’s administration.
“It’s not necessarily that peer support always provides more benefits but it’s that it’s the thing that people prefer often. I think that sometimes words like ‘administration,’ ‘doctor’ or ‘therapist’ is really intimidating and it can be a lot for people . . .” Hall said. “I think sometimes sitting down with someone who is just like you who has experiences that are similar to you or who can contextualize your experiences in a very similar way is a lot easier than going for help in terms of it being very official.”
She said sexual violence complainants are often deterred from approaching authorities because they fear not being believed.
“We put this huge burden on survivors to have the perfect crime perpetrated against [them] in order for us to take what they’re saying with a grain of truth,” Hall said.
Minor said the hotline will likely be open for calls as of Nov. 6. Callers can then access the service from 8 a.m. until midnight, seven days a week throughout the remainder of the academic year—except reading week and winter break—by calling 613-620-1030.
Photo by Aaron Hemens
