On June 2, Stanford University student Brock Turner was sentenced to six months in the Santa Clara County jail for sexually assaulting a 22-year-old female at a party on campus while she was intoxicated.
The verdict was met with an uproar from the public, some calling for a harsher sentence, and others finding it fair. An open letter written by the female who was assaulted, published on Buzzfeed, tells a harrowing tale of her experiences and their aftermath.
Turner’s father, however, failed to see the severity of his son’s actions and said that his sentence was “a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action.”
One thing is for sure about this case: it is one of many sexual assaults that occur on university campuses on a regular basis. According to a 2014 article published in Maclean’s magazine, almost one in five women will be sexually assaulted as students, and studies from the Canadian Federation of Students show that women aged 15 to 24 experience the highest rates of sexual violence in the country.
With those statistics in mind, the Ontario government recently passed Bill 132 in an effort to create more sexual violence prevention. The legislation, entitled “It’s Never Okay: An Action Plan to Stop Sexual Violence and Harrassment,” stipulates that universities must create sexual violence policies that meet the government’s specified criteria.
Upon the introduction of the bill, Carleton took steps to update its sexual assault policy, which ignited heavy debates across campus on sexual violence and the role rape culture plays on university campuses.
The Importance of Policy
Having a stand alone sexual assault policy is crucial for several different reasons, according to Lauren Montgomery, a PhD student at Carleton and Chair of the Women’s Caucus, a subset of Carleton’s Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE).
“Without the policy the mechanisms to be able to go about either an informal or formal complaint process are really difficult and not clear. We need a policy that is accessible-meaning that it is clear how to go about a complaint, as well as a policy that makes it clear that there are several options for survivors including not going to the police or laying a formal complaint,” Montgomery said.
Montgomery also said that policy is important because of its ability to embed prevention mechanisms such as campaigns to address rape culture and services for survivors of sexual assault in the culture of the university so that Carleton can move towards a culture of consent.
Joan Riggs, a consultant hired by Carleton to draft the sexual assault policy, said that it is time for every university to have a meaningful conversation about the issue of sexual violence on campuses.
“There is no campus that doesn’t need this. I think the Stanford case was such a good case because it really showed that there’s two world views functioning at the same time. This guy and his dad clearly thought that there was nothing really that serious that happened, and then you read the victim’s statement and it’s so powerful in terms of really naming what the long term impact is of sexual violence,” Riggs said.
The Role of Terminology
Terminology continues to play a significant role in discussions surrounding Carleton’s sexual assault policy. Using the term “rape culture” was an important part of getting Carleton to acknowledge the existence of its reality, according to Dawn Moore, an associate professor of Law and Equity Chair of the Academic Staff Association.
According to Montgomery, rape culture creates a society that normalizes and legitimizes sexual violence, and it occurs through universities, government, and even pop culture and media.
“Rape culture as a term makes people feel very uncomfortable,” Montgomery said. “It brings attention to the fact that sexual violence is normalized, but also that there’s a systemic nature to it.”
“Survivor centric,” another term that union and student association groups argued should be included in the policy, was also met with heavy debate.
Montgomery said that people tend to hesitate to use the term for fear that it makes a trial biased.
“They assume that perpetrators won’t be given a fair trial or discussion, that the conversation is no longer neutral. And I make the argument that life is not neutral; life is politicized, and the personal is political,” Montgomery said.
According to Professor Moore, members of the university’s union groups and survivor groups were disappointed to find that at further meetings to revise the draft, the university’s administrators would no longer be attending, and would be meeting directly with the president of the university instead of further collaboration.
Riggs said her goal was to mediate the draft meetings at Carleton, but she resigned after the third draft because 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.
Carleton media officer Christopher Cline said in an email that the process of developing the sexual assault policy is currently on hold because, “many students and faculty members are absent from campus over the summer, and because new instructions were issued by the province pertaining to the formulation of the policy.”
Cline added that “the university is committed to completing the process in a consultative fashion” and said the next draft of the policy will be “shared with the broader university community for input.”
Moore said the last revised policy she read, which is the fourth draft, is a “pretty good policy.”
“There are some things in it I would tweak,” Moore said, “but overall it acknowledges rape culture. There’s much more survivor centrism in terms of language around reporting.”
Beyond the Policy
According to Montgomery, although the process of creating a new draft of Carleton’s sexual assault policy only to result in it being stalled indefinitely was an “incredibly disheartening” experience, she pointed out that the turbulence-ridden drafting process has caused many people to begin discussing the often uncomfortable topic.
“The community has come together to provide support for folks, and now we’re having discussions about the material things and conditions that survivors on campus need, and how we can work towards those things,” Montgomery said.
