Carleton student Jade Cooligan Pang is one of five recipients of a 2018 Femmy Award, which celebrates outstanding feminist achievement in the Ottawa region.
Cooligan Pang is the vice-chair of Our Turn Carleton, a student-led initiative to end sexual violence on campus, which has lobbied the administration for reforms and helped to train more than 800 students on sexual violence prevention. She also co-authored the Our Turn National Action Plan, which reviewed more than 60 post-secondary sexual violence policies across Canada and proposed reforms.
The Charlatan spoke with Cooligan Pang about her involvement with the Our Turn chapters and what winning a Femmy Award means to her.
The Charlatan (TC): What was your reaction to winning a Femmy Award?
Jade Cooligan Pang (JCP): I was really surprised. I didn’t even know I was nominated, so when I got the email I was absolutely shocked in the library and was crying. But it’s such a nice feeling and it’s so wonderful that people are paying attention to this now with #MeToo and Time’s Up and with Our Turn. It’s really nice to be recognized, not even for just me personally, but that Our Turn is being recognized and the importance of Our Turn is so wonderful. It’s the most tiring, hard, emotional work sometimes, but it’s totally worth it when we can see positive outcomes and the Femmy Award is one of those positive outcomes. It’s just a nice little thing to keep us going.
TC: What drove you to get involved with Our Turn in the first place?
JCP: Last school year when the university gave out the draft Sexual Violence Policy, the Carleton Human Rights Society wrote a couple of open letters back asking for certain reforms. I was part of the Carleton Human Rights Society and a co-author of the second letter so that’s kind of how we got started and it just kind of evolved into looking at bigger issues across the province and then across the country.
It was initially a taskforce for Carleton, because our initial idea was to look at Carleton’s Sexual Violence Policy and just look at that. When we kind of noticed that it was going to become a bigger thing, . . . we just created a separate national group.
TC: Talking a little bit more about sexual violence on campuses, do you think that the response has been changing?
JCP: I think since our report came out it’s been changing, which is amazing. I’ve met a couple of administrators from different universities across the country and they’ve all looked at our action plan when they are looking at reforming their own [sexual violence] policy, which is fantastic. If you asked me a year ago if anyone was going to listen to students, I might not have said yes. But now that we have such a loud voice and people are actually starting to pay attention to us, it’s amazing. We’re actually being able to influence stuff and get work done . . . I do think people are paying attention and are a lot more willing to participate and help.
TC: When it comes to dealing with the aftermath of sexual violence, what would you say is important for universities to remember?
JCP: In terms of how I would hope administrators respond is to continue to support the survivor and understand that sexual violence is such a unique type of violence. It goes with you everywhere you go. It’s hard to explain how it affects somebody, but it affects somebody in all sorts of ways, whether it be with their relationships, with school, with their jobs, physically, emotionally, mentally, all of that. So it’s important to be able to support them and continuously support them in a way that’s going to help them.
TC: What experiences have you had working with Our Turn and what have you learned?
JCP: That’s a really good question. I’ve learned a lot about policy and writing but I’ve learned that everything is possible, anything is possible. I mean that in a good way. It is possible to have these reforms happen, it is possible to have survivor-centric policy, it is possible to try and eliminate rape culture on campuses. All of those things are possible if you’re willing to put in the work and you’re willing to do it . . . which is very encouraging and exciting. It can be a battle at times, but we’re getting there.
TC: Going forward, what would you like to see in terms of the work that Our Turn does?
JCP: In terms of the Carleton campus, I’d really love to see the recommendations that the Board of Governors had [to reform the Sexual Violence Policy] be put in because they’re recommendations that we had as well. That would be fantastic, and having some reforms and better ways of responding to sexual violence [at campus services].
In terms of national, I think it would be great if all provinces could have legislation similar to what Bill-132 in Ontario has. . .We also want to make sure that’s there’s an oversight mechanism to make sure that schools are actually following through with this and that there’s another avenue for a survivor to go if they’re not being heard or being helped properly by the administration that they report to.
Photo provided by Jade Cooligan Pang
