The original version of this article contained an error and has been changed. See the bottom of the article for more information.
UCLA’s second annual Consent Week aimed to use five days to spread awareness of sexual violence and prevention, but failed to adequately expand its outreach to all affected communities on campus.
This year, the groups involved in executing the week of awareness – including the Undergraduate Students Association Council Student Wellness Commission, 7000 in Solidarity and Campus Assault Resources and Education – attempted to bring often-ignored narratives of sexual assault into the limelight. The five days consisted of events focused on the effects of sexual violence in the male, undocumented, LGBTQ and people of color communities.
It is imperative to discuss the issue of sexual assault as it affects communities regularly disregarded in popular discourse. But it’s equally crucial to extend these narratives and prevention tactics to communities who are uncomfortable with the topic of sexual assault and less conscious of sexual assault awareness and prevention efforts, which Consent Week’s events did not manage to do.
Chrissy Keenan, third-year human biology and society student and the co-campaign manager of 7000 in Solidarity, said that throughout the week the events had in total about 500 students in attendance.
Five hundred out of nearly 30,000 students is not enough. It is true that many communities disregard events that they aren’t used to attending, and forcing these communities to attend is no simple task, but more could be done to expand outreach. It seems that this year’s outreach was aimed mainly toward students already involved in USAC, students interested in the topic of sexual violence and students that are a part of the underrepresented groups on campus that Consent Week’s events tried to focus on. But limiting the audience of these kinds of events will do little to spread awareness about sexual assault.
To be sure, the responsibility for outreach does not lie solely with the groups’ most direct organizers. A joint effort of all offices within USAC could help draw in a more diverse crowd. Every council member has his or her own office they could have encouraged to attend, as well as his or her own communities, which likely would have diversified the groups in attendance at the events, if only slightly.
But even with this kind of outreach, it’s still highly probable that attendants would still have, in some way, been affiliated with the programming or with the niche group of people involved in student government. It still would have been necessary to get outside communities on campus to attend.
Greek life members make one of those communities. The groups who planned the programs did reach out to fraternity and sorority life in order to reward Standards of Excellence points to fraternities and sororities on campus who attend these events. But more could have been done to encourage this community’s attendance at these events.
The groups hosting the events could have outreached to communities that don’t normally attend Consent Week through row walking, a source of advertising where leaders of a movement go door to door to each sorority and fraternity house during chapter meetings and spread awareness about their upcoming events and causes. By doing this, the groups involved in planning Consent Week would not only broaden that community’s perspective on sexual assault, but also teach a community at risk about how to prevent sexual violence.
According to an audit addressed by the state and the federal government to California universities last year, there are major requests for UCLA to direct more effort in educating and training students involved in Greek life before they can host events. All communities mentioned in this audit should have been reached out to more vigorously and should have attended this past week’s events.
By not adequately reaching out to a diverse crowd, they missed out on a large community and only drew in those who care about the topic.
Some outreach was done to reach students in underrepresented groups on campus, according to Savannah Badalich, USAC Student Wellness commissioner. Inviting underrepresented students to these events was a positive thing, but the turnout of 500 students shows that this model of outreach didn’t attract enough students.
It should be noted that Consent Week’s events and overall message were a positive thing for this campus. It’s not an easy thing to create programming about topics like this that draw in large and diverse crowds. But if we want to truly spread awareness, we have to try harder to do that.
Correction: About 500 students, not 100, participated in Consent Week events, according to event organizers.
Yes, it is especially important for members of Greek Life to attend these type of events. The thing is that they do, and they do quite often. Every new member of Greek Life attends a blame it on the alcohol workshop. In addition, every active member attended a mandatory sexual assault training last quarter, because of the audit. Multiple Greek organizations host speakers every year to speak about sexual assault. When SOE points are offered, they are by far the majority at these events. Frankly, they’ve heard everything there is to know about consent before. I think SWC’s goal is to reach students who are uninformed about consent, and recognizes it needs to aim towards other groups on campus. Their biggest obstacle is that people just don’t care, and they can’t be forced to.
I am REALLY disappointed with DB’s reporting on this issue.
As a member of a UCLA Newsmagazine I am not surprised, this sort of biased and dehumanized reporting is the reason sensitivity training is now mandatory for DB staff and I hope the author of this article chooses to attend.
This article really nulls the effort of an incredibly important facet of student life.
For only the 2nd consent week, I believe the team did MORE than expected, and even reaching out to one survivor of sexual assault should be considered a success.
I am ashamed that not only did this print but that there is some assumption you can put a qualitative number on what “reaches” people, typical Daily Bruin to try and break down things to numbers that should not be.
I do not think there is a way to logically deduce “how many” people were effected, how many people viewed the art gallery or went by the tables and had conversations with or without the staff that could potentially save lives.
The author had no idea what was put into this week and how hard members worked. Going to one event does not give you the reporting authority to make sweeping claims about the whole week.
This article made me lose faith in the Bruin and I do not respect not will I pursue their articles any longer.
I am ashamed to be a Bruin if this is the sort of reckless reporting our school allows.