Policy distrust

You have to dig through a bunch of irrelevant pages on the Saint Mary’s website to actually find the sexual violence policy. Um, and then that is basically it; there are no supporting documents around…

There is relevance to students ’cause it does give them a little bit of insight into what’s covered under it and whom they can go to, to discuss their options. Um, but it doesn’t really…

There’s a lot of legal mumbo jumbo which might not be understandable for people who maybe have a language barrier.[…] And because it’s just so long, like, a lot of people want to find the…

The other thing I would wonder about is, what is the plan to make sure that it continues to be relevant? […]. I would think that there – or I would hope that there is…

My first one is, who creates the policy? Um, there’s been a lot of debate at Saint Mary’s about who should actually be creating the policy and like, is this group pre-made? Does it pop…

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…

Participant 1: [Laughs] The sexual violence response team creates the policy, and the sexual violence response team also happens to be the people that enforce the policy. Um, so, it’s bad- you can’t write the…

[Since] 1990, the entire world has changed a our policy has not. Comparing it to even to other schools, like, Dalhousie and St. FX, like, their policies are quite expansive and cover a lot of…

It’s really frustrating as a student, because, it feels like they’ve, they put a brick wall between us and that policy. It feels like they’re trying to put every single barrier that they possibly can…

In terms of an informal resolution- if that was the victim’s route, and everything was resolved this way, how would the university see the accused person? Like, would they still be seen as a risk…