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Caucasian Female

It definitely reflects more of an institutional concern

Participant 1: I think it definitely reflects more of an institutional concern, like we discussed before, the policy is not really great for accessibility or understanding for students, especially a student in crisis. Just in general, policies in universities want to, like, check a box and make sure that they have, like, if something were to happen, they have a way to cover themselves. But I guess, this is not enough for victims of something like sexualized violence- you need to be catering to everyone involved, where our policy, I think is more directly figured to like, registration and staff that would have to take a disclosure or a report and deal with that. It doesn’t really take students into account at all. Facilitator: Okay, so you feel that this is definitely more about covering the requirements, basically, for the institution, rather than reflecting the needs of the person who is experiencing the violence.
Participant 1: Yeah, definitely.
Participant 2: Yeah, I agree. It’s very, like, institutional and administrative, more like human resource? Just checking a box saying they have it and, like, just the fact that I barely knew what was involved in the sexual assault policy. Like, we will explain and we will give workshops on sexual violence and prevention, but, the fact that students aren’t made aware of the policy kind of goes to show how lacking it is in the point of view of the student. [...] If they didn’t have anything then they would get in trouble. So, by having it, they can say that, "yes, we have safeguards in place and we have these things," but, on a practical sense, I feel like it’s not as useful as it should be.

Recommendations

  • Including male students across cultures in discussions of sexual violence, gender stereotypes, and stereotypes of masculinity.