One of the moments I remember most vividly from my new student orientation was when a presenter asked us to raise our hands if we knew someone who had experienced sexual assault. Looking around Ackerman Grand Ballroom, well over half of the 400 or so students who surrounded me had their hands raised high.
Despite the compelling nature of this image, a sea of hands representing the effect of sexual assault on the lives of so many students, the actual training we were given that day came in the form of a brief skit about the boundaries of consent. It was bland, quick and failed to properly encompass the seriousness of the topic.
The University of California is making efforts to change that image. Starting in September, new students will be required to participate in additional training and educational programs, and each campus will be staffed with a respondent support coordinator in addition to current resources.
And while these changes are both necessary and positive steps for the UC, certain dialogues need to begin even before these new provisions take effect. Otherwise, the changes will not bring about lasting change and will represent little more than another mandatory event for new students.
One of these dialogues that needs to take root on campus is that of California’s affirmative consent definition. Through the passage of a law last fall, consent now requires “affirmative, conscious and voluntary agreement to engage in sexual activity.” Essentially, the law has changed consent from the standard “no means no” to “yes means yes,” an important improvement that specifies silence or lack of protest no longer qualifies as consent.
Discussing what affirmative consent is, what it means to revoke consent and why several UC campuses, UCLA included, are being investigated for potential Title IX violations relating to sexual assault will help further a culture of consent on campus. Without these conversations, some of which admittedly may be more difficult than others, there is no way for UCLA community members to play a role in shaping this culture.
Handling consent and sexual assault without dialogue makes it difficult to develop a strong culture of consent – a culture in which students support survivors without blame, a culture in which alcohol doesn’t take the place of consent, a culture in which resources are available to those in need. The list goes on and on about what consent culture should look like, but the premise revolves around treating humans with decency, respecting those experiencing pain and ensuring that everyone understands the critical, fundamental need to give and receive consent.
Everyone is responsible for starting these conversations. Greek life has to play a role in talking to their members about consent culture, but so do sports teams, theater groups and campus tour guides. Everyone should understand the importance of these discussions when they see the hands raised in new student orientation demonstrating the wide-reaching effects of sexual assault.
No one community is being targeted or burdened with ending assault on campus, but if each person who held their hand up at orientation spoke to their friends, who then spoke to their larger communities about how to improve consent culture on campus, progress would be made.
An article from The New York Times in July discussed the affirmative consent standard recently adopted in all public universities across New York, the same standard signed into law by Gov. Jerry Brown as the legal standard at all state colleges and universities in California.
The article brings up some critical points, noting that many students didn’t know what qualified as consent despite the clearly laid out parameters of the new definition.
Times reporter Sandy Keenan notes, “To take the pulse of consent culture, I spoke with several dozen students at the State University of New York at Albany. Only a few knew about the standards.”
And I’m confident the same would be true if UCLA students or UC students as a whole were surveyed.
But what this signals to me is not that consent standards are useless and bad. It simply signals to me that standards alone cannot do all the work. The human beings who will be carrying out the practices, those who will be teaching the trainings and the administrators who will be enforcing the standards must play a critical role in ensuring they create cultures within their own communities where consent is the rule.
Every community member, returning or new, is responsible for being aware and educated about new campus policies.
These new standards and enhanced training requirements can meet a need for the development of a campus culture that better respects and understands those affected by sexual assault. Dialogue needs to begin in order to learn how we can best foster a culture of respect and compassion on our campus.
Thinking about that moment at freshmen orientation, when I looked around Ackerman Grand Ballroom and saw that so many individuals had been affected by sexual assault, leads me to believe there is impetus behind a change in consent culture, just never a clear opportunity for people to speak up and take part in the conversation.
Interesting article