In recent years at Concordia, there has been a huge focus on developing services and policies to serve students’ interests in the areas of plagiarism, tuition fees, and employment, but the problem of sexual assault at university goes largely unreported.
Meanwhile, policies and prevention initiatives are implemented without input from the university community – the result being that they fail to address the concrete needs of the people they are intended to serve. All of this creates a culture of silence and marginalization for survivors of sexual assault within the university community – a culture that is reflective of the dominant culture in society at large.
Sexual assault is not just a university problem; it is a societal one, with systemic inequity at its heart. Misogyny, racism, heterosexism, cis-supremacy, ableism, colonization of Indigenous peoples… all of these contribute to a world in which one in three women and one in six men worldwide will at some point in their lives be the targets of sexualized violence. Large institutions like colleges and universities, far from being exempt from this, are often among the worst perpetrators of this culture of violence.
In direct response to this, student movements to provide better policies and services are growing across Canada and the US. Holding post-secondary communities accountable for sexual assault is an area where students, in cooperation with faculty and staff, can be primary leaders for change.
The Sexual Assault Centre Campaign is the driving force behind on-campus consent education initiatives, resource-building around survivor support at the Centre for Gender Advocacy and Concordia University at large, and advocacy on university and community levels.
Together, it is our goal to lobby the university for institutional change in the way it handles cases of sexual assault, as well as for space and financing for a much needed student-run Sexual Assault Centre.
To get involved, contact sexualhealth[at]centre2110.org, or contact us at the 2110 MacKay location.
The 2110 Centre for Gender Advocacy wishes to thank the SUSTAINABILITY ACTION FUND for its generous support of this project.
