Apparently “No means No,” isn’t a clear enough slogan.
The University Students’ Council is partnering up with the Sexual Assault Centre of London and Changing Ways with a goal to change attitudes regarding sexual violence on campus.
The groups are planning to create a campus–wide education and awareness campaign, which will start this September.
The campaign is entering its second stage, during which marketing and a strategy will be decided. The program’s first stage consisted of setting up campus focus groups in order to discuss both marketing campaigns and to determine the presence of issues regarding sexual violence on campus.
“This will be the first of it’s kind in Canada to our knowledge,” Louise Pitre, executive director of the SACL, said.
The USC’s campaign is influenced by numerous campaigns in the United States. However Will Bortolin, vice-president campus issues for the USC, felt this campaign would offer something completely different: “It’s going to be something that we’ve never seen before so it’s difficult to say what it’s going to look like.”
According to Pitre, the campaign will not only have traditional media such as posters, but will also be incorporated into Soph training, theatre and various media outlets.
“We want it to be statements that are easy to remember, we want something recognizable, but we want something that fits into the culture of the University,” Pitre said.
She hoped the school’s culture will change over time and students will be able to teach each other these new attitudes.
“It is about shifting an entire culture, it’s about shifting sexist attitudes and shifting this notion that women are responsible for being raped and sexually assaulted,” Pitre explained. “It is also about creating sustainable change and it is also about creating an initiative that is owned by the students.”
“I don’t feel it’s specifically a student problem,” Bortolin said. “It’s a problem in our age group.”
Bortolin and Pitre agreed part of the campaign’s focus will be ending the role of the bystander.
“I think that what happens is we’re pressured by our peers and we don’t want to get involved. So it’s about shifting that attitude, that you don’t have to be a bystander, that there are ways to act and to create a different culture on campus and to prevent sexual violence,” Pitre explained. “It’s about empowering those guys who know this is not okay.”
Bortolin felt verbal harassment needed to be curbed as well.
“Verbal sexual harassment needs to be recognized as sexual violence,” he said. “[These actions] still have a really negative impact on the feeling of safety on our campus.”
“My personal hope is that it is something more than presenting information, something that changes students perspectives in a way that lasts long beyond the end of this project, and long beyond their time at Western,” Scott Kerr, VP-elect for campus issues, said.
“We’re very reactive when it comes to sexual violence — maybe because we don’t want to believe something so horrible can actually happen, until it does — and we need to become more proactive,” Kerr added.
Kerr noted this program is in place for two years and emphasized the importance of maintaining similar partnerships in the future.
Pitre hoped for this program to become a model for other schools: “Our hope is that that will be certainly a provincial model and we’re just in the process of starting to build some relationships with other universities.”