York University’s Centre for Human Rights has launched a new campaign aiming to prevent sexual violence through education.
The campaign, titled “You Had Me at Consent,” kicked off Sept. 3 with keynote speaker Don McPherson, a former NFL and CFL quarterback, now a social justice educator.
“The conversation was one around consent and sexual and dating violence, and understanding that we have to have this conversation before things happen to prevent them,” McPherson said.
“It’s a really difficult conversation to have but when you approach it in the right way, you can see that the ideas that perpetuate sexual violence do hurt us all,” he said. “It just takes a little explaining to get people to realize that it’s in everyone’s best interests to not only talk about these issues but to do something about them.
The centre’s sexual harassment education adviser Noa Ashkenazi said she created the event with her team after an external safety audit led to a recommendation that the university should hold a sexual violence prevention event at the beginning of every school year.
“The purpose of this campaign is to make sure that we always talk about sexual violence. We are trying to set a new discourse about sexual violence and rape culture—that this kind of behaviour is not okay, and neither is silence on these issues,” Ashkenazi said.
The campaign comes after numerous incidents of sexual assault reported last year at York.
“We don’t have the rate for all complaints [last year]—even if we did, one of the problems is most cases are not being reported,” Ashkenazi said. “This is one of our biggest struggles and getting people to speak up is one of our goals.”
The campaign will include hosting workshops and presentations throughout the fall term to continue the conversation around preventing sexual violence, according to Ashkenazi. The centre also created a single-edition newspaper about sexual violence and consent as part of the campaign, she said.
“The most worrisome thing is that some people are indifferent and they don’t want to talk about sexual violence even if they might really be affected by sexual violence,” Ashkenazi said. “There are some people who really buy into a culture of silence. I just want people to be more engaged.”
Weiting Xu, a second-year international business administration student at York’s Schulich School of Business who attended McPherson’s keynote speech, said this kind of campaign is always necessary to educate and bring awareness to the issues of sexual assault.
“I believe that sexual assault awareness should be on the forefront of everyone’s priorities,” Xu, a residence don at York, said.
“I have a calendar of all the workshops offered by the centre . . . These will be posted in my building to make sure that students are aware of these tools to help educate each and every one of us,” she said.
Carleton University is also launching a new gender-neutral campaign to prevent sexual violence on campus titled, “Think! Engage! Change!” according to Carleton University Students’ Association vice-president (student issues) Gina Parker.
This campaign is designed to make students conscious of the actions and words that they use which contribute to sexual violence and rape culture, Parker said. It will launch during Carleton’s “Throwback” weekend Sept. 21.
“The campaign presents students with a common scenario, and offers them an alternative action to employ in lieu of actions and words that contribute to sexual violence and rape culture on our campus,” Parker said. “We are hoping it will have a very big impact on the students and will ultimately encourage students to change their behaviour as they become conscious of the degree that it contributes to sexual violence.”
A sexual assault was reported on York’s campus a few days after the campaign was launched.
