Last week, the Students for Sexual Assault Prevention team and Sexual Misconduct Response and Prevention Office promoted consent during the week of St. Patrick’s Day. They held events around campus with activities such as button making, tattoos and stickers, a photo booth, chocolate fountain, cupcakes, beads, and a Snap Chat filter all with the theme of consent. Cute buttons and signs with phrases like, “Kiss me with consent!” and “Irish I could consent, but I’m drunk,” served as positive reminders to students about the importance of consent.
Dr. Dusty Johnstone, the Sexual Misconduct Response and Prevention Officer at the University of Windsor, was largely responsible for this event. She “provides advocacy and support for members of the University community who have experienced sexual violence and coordinates education on sexual violence response for the campus community.” She also took part in the implementation of the Bystander Initiative to End Sexual Assault (Johnstone).
Q: How long have you been working to prevent sexual assault at the University of Windsor?
A: The Sexual Misconduct Response and Prevention Office was created in September 2015 (though I’ve been doing prevention work at the University since 2011).
Q: What gave you the idea to create this event? (as opposed to another prevention idea)
A: The students who have really led this initiative wanted to promote positive messaging around consent. With St. Patrick’s Day approaching, we felt it was a good time to highlight the relationship between alcohol and consent – specifically the way that alcohol can really limit someone’s ability to consent to sexual activity.
Q: How do you hope awareness will affect students?
A: We want students to have a safe and positive St. Patrick’s Day. We think it is particularly important that everyone who drinks takes the time to reflect on what they are like when they consume alcohol. Alcohol can make us less likely to pay attention to what other people are communicating. We need to make sure that if we initiate any sort of sexual activity when we’ve been drinking that we are still in a place where we can discern if the other person is ok and if they’re in a position to consent to what we have initiated.
Q: What kind of activities were done to promote consent?
A: We had a button making campaign to promote positive messages about consent. Each day last week we were in a different building on campus and had a button making station – people could use one of our designs or they could design their own! On Thursday, March 16th we had a chocolate fountain in the CAW and gave away stickers, beads, and tattoos all promoting a consensual St. Patty’s Day.
Q: Sexual assault is a major problem on many campuses. How do you plan to continue your work on sexual misconduct in the future?
A: I think that we need to have a continuous and integrated approach to sexual assault prevention and response. We need awareness campaigns, like Keep It Consensual, and we need targeted educational programming that is available to a wide number of students – like the Bringing in the Bystander workshops. We are also currently working on disclosure training for staff and faculty to better prepare them to receive disclosures from their students. It’s a complicated social problem so it needs to be addressed in a number of ways.
Q: This question is for any students who may have missed the event but who would still like to benefit from sexual assault awareness. Where do you recommend they go for information/assistance?
A: We are currently in the process of redesigning our website. Soon we will have more information there.
I also think this [article on Everyday Feminism] is a really good resource.
Q: What are your thoughts on the success of the event?
A: We’ve had a lot of student engagement and support from the campus community.
Works Cited:
Johnstone, Dusty. “Health Research Centre for the Study of Violence against Women.” University of Windsor. http://www1.uwindsor.ca/hrc/dusty-johnstone