Critic’s Pick: Definitions of Consent

If you missed last week’s post on Drug and Alcohol Amnesty Policies, one of our goals here at SAFER is to use the Campus Accountability Project to gather the best and worst practices of campus sexual assault policies. This week, we’re investigating Definitions of Consent.

As far as policies go right now, nearly every school has a different definition of sexual assault. Most agree, however, that sexual assault occurs when there is an incident of “non-consensual” sexual conduct. Unfortunately, many schools stop there. Students are somehow supposed to know what non-consensual sexual conduct is when the word consent isn’t defined anywhere! Definitions of consent are integral to sexual assault policies because they are the key to determining when sexual assault or misconduct has occurred.

A surprising number of universities’ policies never define consent. Some attempt to briefly discuss what consent is not but can’t seem to make it to what consent actually is. A concrete, clear, and well-defined definition of consent allows students to assess their own behavior and lends support to survivors who choose to file reports and take action.

Let’s start by looking at what some regard as the classic example: Antioch College. The Sexual Offense Prevention Policy aims to foster positive, consensual sexuality that emphasizes respect and ongoing communication. Directly following the preface, the policy states:

Consent is defined as the act of willingly and verbally agreeing to engage in specific sexual conduct.

A number of clarifying points follow this definition, stating, among other things, that “consent is required each and every time there is sexual activity,” that the person initiating is responsible for getting consent, that silence is not consent, and that all parties must have “unimpaired judgment.” The nearly 15 clarifying points are extremely important in making this definition of consent concrete and understandable.

Reed College also offers a good example of a definition. It divides its definition into two parts: effective consent and ineffective consent. The policy makes clear that unless consent is clear and effective, it cannot be considered consent. The great thing about Reed’s definition is how it gets across the message that victim blaming is not accepted. Take a look at some of what it says about effective consent:

Effective consent is informed; freely and actively given; mutually understandable words or actions; which indicate a willingness to do the same thing, at the same time, in the same way, with each other…Students are strongly encouraged to talk with each other before engaging in sexual behavior, and to communicate as clearly and verbally as possible with each other…it is the responsibility of the initiator, or the person who wants to engage in the specific sexual activity to make sure that he or she has consent. Consent to some form of sexual activity does not necessarily imply consent to other forms of sexual activity…Mutually understandable consent is almost always an objective standard…

Reed begins with what consent is in detail and then encourages communication in a sex-positive manner, while acknowledging that not all situations are identical. This definition also provides an exception (the only exception!): long-term relationships. The ineffective consent portion recognizes that there are many scenarios in which a person is unable to consent while putting the responsibility on the initiators of the act. It emphasizes that victims cannot be blamed for what they experience. All in all, Reed’s definition of consent is detailed and comprehensive while providing numerous examples to reinforce clarity.

Let’s give a few more shout-outs to schools with better-than-average definitions of consent: Case Western Reserve University, Emory University, Duke University, and Hamilton College. While these definitions may not necessarily be quite as comprehensive as the two discussed above, they give a pretty clear idea of what the schools define consent to be.

There is a long list of schools, including Cornell University, College of William & Mary and Bethany College, that do not say what consent is but manage to define what consent is not. While this is not ideal, at least these schools are one step ahead of those who do not even come close to clearly defining consent. Boston University, Brown University, and Haverford College all fall under this entirely unfortunate category. Sadly, this last list of schools is by far the longest.

It’s about time that campus policies included a clear and detailed definition of consent. It is not enough to say that the college or university does not tolerate “non-consensual” sexual conduct. There is no way for students to truly understand what that means and evaluate their own and others’ behaviors unless consent is defined. How can students be expected to only engage in consensual acts if they don’t know what those are?

One highly controversial aspect of policies that I didn’t address today in the consent definitions is the statement about “mentally incapacitated” or “mentally disabled” persons. Tune in next time to get a rundown of which schools are doing it well and which ones can’t quite get it right.

And remember: consent is sexy!

Campus News Round-Up (Student Newsaper Edition!)

A student at the University of Maryland used the Yale fraternity situation to take to her school’s newspaper and encourage her peers to think about how their language influences their behavior. Right on, Andrea: Our language cements destructive and outdated gender norms, which dictate that sex is a commodity women keep from men and a woman’s decision to have multiple partners makes her less valuable.”

A PAVE member over at UW-Madison wrote a great piece for the school’s newspaper about how complicated abusive relationships can be and why it’s important for friends to be supportive, rather than judgmental. And speaking of dating violence, the University of Mary Washington is launching a dating violence awareness campaign this month. It’s exciting to see some momentum around the issue, because we’ve noticed that very few schools address dating violence at any kind of institutional level.

Earlham College had “Positive Sexuality Week” on campus last week, which I think is a great way to re-frame what had traditionally been “sexual violence awareness week.” The week’s events were run by the student group Action Against Sexual Violence, and included an awesome-sounding student forum where folks discussed:

[I]ssues like gender and assumptions about perpetrators and survivors of sexual violence and assumptions about parties and “hooking up”. There was also discussion of the administration’s response to sexual assault. Students who spoke disagreed about the level or quality of support they thought the administration provided. Students also commented on the lack of student initiative and how this might impact the attitude or actions of school administration.

This is kind of interesting. When I posted my last Campus Round-Up over at Feministing Campus, a commenter pointed out the lack of gender diversity in the Dartmouth “Short Answer” feature which asked a group of students to weigh in on whether or not the school should be more active in addressing sexual assault. So this week, The Dartmouth opinion staff posed a question to their peers about whether professors had any place in the conversation about campus alcohol and sexual misconduct, and I was looking at the names. And yeah, 9 of the 10 students interviewed had names generally identified as male (Samuel, Jonathan, etc). What’s up with that? Not exactly representative of the student body, huh?

Buried in this article about how to address campus alcohol violations in the College of William and Mary’s school paper  is a great quote from an administrator about why they address sexual assault differently than other conduct violations:

“We see sexual violence as an act that deprives a student of control over his or her body or sexuality,” [Assistant Dean of Students] Gilbert said. “We don’t bring the students in and tell them they have to do anything- we provide options. You can do nothing, you can merely report it to the Dean of Students, you can adjudicate it in the conduct process or you can report it to the police.”

Finally, one update: remember that story about how 12 Central Washington University students were hospitalized and it was thought they had been drugged at a party? Turns out they became ill from drinking too much Four Loko, a new “energy” kind of a drink that is 12% alcohol and apparently contains as much caffeine as a cup of coffee.  23 students at Ramapo College in NY also went to the hospital because of the stuff. Let’s see how long it takes before it gets taken off the market.

Friday Video Break: College William and Mary

Amanda is on vacation this week, so there will sadly be no going beyond the campus…

This whole week has been slow on the blog, as you might have noticed. Apologies, our 9 to 5s have kept us busy. But I wanted to stop in share a video I really enjoyed. SAFER Board of Advisors member Nora sent me a link to this video made by students at North Carolina State University on bystander intervention, which was definitely cool. But as always happens on YouTube, I got distracted by another video, and another and another. But I finally settled on this one taken in 2007 at the College of William and Mary.

It’s a simple video. Some students at William and Mary just interviewed a bunch of their peers about their perceptions of sexual assault on campus and how the school and students address the issue. But I like the video because it shows how smart a lot of students are about this stuff, and how they are clearly ready (and in some cases explicitly asking) for more information/programming/support from their schools on the issue of campus sexual assault. In eight minutes, students bring up so many of the things we blog about here all of time: risk reduction isn’t enough; joking about rape isn’t OK; “lesser” forms of sexual assault are still sexual assault; men can also be victims of sexual assault, and so on. They’re saying the right things, as are so many of their peers across the country. Now if only schools would listen…

SAFER News + College Students Hard at (Prevention) Work

First, some SAFER business—

It looks like we didn’t win the Ideablob contest, which sucks, but I want to thank everyone again for all of the support: the votes, blog posts, RTs, emails…it was amazing, thank you so much. It’s good to know we have such good people standing behind us.

I also want to remind people that we are currently looking for new Board members. All of the details are located in that link to Jen’s original post, but I wanted to throw in my own two cents: I’ve been on the Board of SAFER since May, and it has been an unbelievably valuable experience. Thinking of it as a Board of Directors doesn’t really do it justice—we are (currently) 8 people who run an organization in our spare time (we are all employed full time or are students outside of SAFER). That’s a huge commitment, but it’s an incredibly satisfying one. The past 5 months have been an amazing crash course in nonprofit management and planning, grassroots organizing, and sexual assault prevention—I have learned so so much, and have had the chance to work with a badass group of people whose passion for the work is nothing less than inspiring. So I encourage folks to submit an application. It can be a lot of work, but I think it’s worth it. Check out the above link and for more information and an applcation, please contact Jennifer Howard, Board Development Coordinator, at jennifer@safercampus.org.

Onto some awesome stuff coming out of colleges down in DC/VA:

A writer at the College of William and Mary’s student newspaper talks about the important role of positive peer pressure in sexual assault prevention.

Fraternities at George Washington University are challenging the assumption that “frat boys” are sexist and homophobic, and holding their brothers to higher standards.

At Georgetown, “R U Ready? encourages collaboration among students from diverse backgrounds and addresses sexual assault and its effects on victims.” (h/t Men Can Stop Rape’s twitter)

Recognizing Sexual Assault Awareness Month

April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month (SAAM), and many colleges and organizations are honoring it in creative and thought-provoking ways. Here are just a few:

The very thought of walking in high heels makes me feel nauseous, so I salute the 161 men who decided to Walk a Mile in Her Shoes. It’s not particularly common to see men rallying for women’s rights, so seeing them doing just that while decked out in heels is always uplifting.

Another article spoke about students at the College of William and Mary honored SAAM with their “Consent is Sexy” week, hanging a large banner with anonymous messages from students.  Called the Hope Wall, messages included “Change can happen,” and “Move from surviving to thriving.”

Ithaca College held a discussion panel to publicize changes made to their sexual assault policy. It’s great to read about some of the reforms that are being made just in time for this month, including minimum sanctions for specific offenses and the creation of more specific sexual assault terms; both necessary in helping to lessen the chance of a case being thrown out for lack of consensus.

Continue reading