A pair of computer engineering students at the University of Toronto have made an app to help improve campus safety, which they say is needed because the university lacks educational resources on consent and sexual assault.
Launched in August 2021, computer engineering students Nelson Lee and Ethan Hugh created Haven after hearing about a friend’s sexual assault experience on campus at U of T St. George.
“I was shocked by just how prevalent sexual assault was on campus,” Lee said. “We needed a more proactive, in-the-moment tool for people to stay safe.”
Haven gives users a one-touch access to campus safety or emergency services, a pre-written script to quickly provide information in a crisis, a siren and instant location sharing to friends or family.
Some students find the university’s resources in need of improvement. Riya Charla, a first-year architecture student, said she used U of T’s TravelSafer option on the U of T Campus Safety app to request someone to walk with her when going back to her residence in the dark, but it took 20 minutes for the staff from campus safety to reach her.
“I know they’re trying, but there’s always more things they can do,” Charla said.
An emailed statement from a U of T spokesperson said in part “educational initiatives are an important part of [the university’s] work” including offering training and workshops for students, staff and faculty groups on identifying and reporting sexual harrassment among other ongoing initiatives.
“We are grateful for the dedication and ingenuity of our community in this work as well — the Haven app developed by students is a great example of this,” the spokesperson said.
Lee said they wanted to incorporate an educational component about sexual violence in the app.
“We have to tackle the root problem,” Lee said. “But consent is not usually well taught in high schools and educational settings.”
While consent is part of Ontario’s health curriculum, Action Canada, an organization that promotes sexual and reproductive health rights in Canada, found there is a lack of standardized testing, monitoring and evaluation to determine if high school and elementary teachers are implementing the core content.
In 2018, the Canadian Women’s Foundation found that only 28 per cent of Canadians fully understand consent.
After consulting with professionals at crisis centres and the Ontario Network of Sexual Assault/Domestic Violence, Haven creators released an educational centre within the app on Jan. 10.
Lee said he saw some orientation programs at other universities provide consent and sexual violence workshops, but he did not see any during his university’s orientation.
“It’s rare for people to talk about sexual assault on a conversational level. I think we need to remove the stigma about talking about consent, so students can understand it is something that deals with their personal safety and rights as a person,” he said.
Amalie Wilkinson, a second-year student in international relations, peace conflict and justice studies, said she felt U of T provided more resources to learn about consent and sexual assault in the past year after Western U’s sexual assault allegations in September 2021, but she struggled with accessing them.
She said she only learned about the tools through her position on the debate team’s executive team because it was a leadership role.
Charla said her residence provides a plethora of resources, including helplines posted on the bulletin boards. She added her residence floor don also discusses consent and sexual violence at every monthly meeting.
However, she said the resources are limited to the residence. “I haven’t really seen any more information out there on campus,” Charla said.
Wilkinson said a main issue with the resources is that students often don’t know how to access them.
In her first year, Wilkinson said she needed to access U of T’s sexual violence resources, but she and her friends couldn’t find one that they felt would guarantee confidentiality.
“That made me very critical about how the university has been putting up its resources and advertising them,” she said. “I know that it exists, but it isn’t something we could find. We eventually gave up.”
According to Wilkinson, the main issue with U of T’s consent and sexual violence resources is the lack of communication from the administration to the students about resources.
“We get a lot of newsletters and emails from the university, and whenever sexual violence and consent education is included, I feel like it’s usually included in the bottom where no one reads,” she said.
Even though U of T wrote about Haven in October 2021, neither Wilkinson nor Charla knew about it. “An app like this is an awesome resource, but people need to know it exists,” Wilkinson said. “I think it’s a big problem with communication.”
Wilkinson said there could be a specific, separate information session at the beginning of the academic year that is clearly advertised to tackle sexual violence prevention and information. She also suggests for information sessions to be made consistent, brought up in classes and discussed at clubs.
“Let people know exactly what resources exist so it’s not an individual exercise in trying to seek them out,” she said.
Lee said he wishes he didn’t need to be the one to bring this resource to his peers.
“I wish that people decades ago would have taught consent to really ingrain this in the system so that everyone would know it, but at the end of the day, it’s something that needs to be done,” he said.
This piece has been updated on March 2 to include a statement from the University of Toronto.
Featured image by Johnny Guatto via the University of Toronto.
