By Espoir Manirambona
A Carleton University Senate meeting on March 18 was unfolding in the usual dry administrative manner.
A disproportionately white and male crowd of suited professors and students listened as the university dictated its plan to celebrate Carleton’s 75th anniversary.
One could almost hear the snores until a handful of students marched into the room. A beautifully diverse group of young leaders came with determination and banners reading “Prevention Mechanisms,” “Community Oversight” and “Universal Policy” demanding with their silent presence that Carleton’s administration address rape culture on campus.
After being ignored for several minutes, a senator asked President Roseann Runte to do the right thing and acknowledge the presence of the students, which she did reluctantly.
One of the students, Lauren Montgomery, doctoral student and Women’s Caucus Chair of CUPE 4600, eloquently spoke about how student activists have been asking the university administration for a survivor-centred policy that recognizes rape culture.
Runte responded by saying the university is developing a policy regarding sexual assault but admitted that she is not up to date on how the process is unfolding.
In recent months, the Carleton administration has organized a series of meetings and consultations around the process of creating a sexual assault policy that Carleton is now mandated to implement following a new law passed by the provincial government.
Montgomery and other stakeholders involved in the consultation process feel that they have been disrespected during the meetings and that their feedback has thus far not been incorporated, although they are hopeful that this will change.
“They are refusing to implement what we are asking them for,” Montgomery told the Leveller. “They do not acknowledge rape culture.”
Students have been demanding a universal policy that applies to workers as well as students, a strategy that focuses on prevention and independent community oversight.
“The university purports to be doing their best and they’re not,” said Montgomery. “[Runte] doesn’t know who the stakeholders are or what their demands are.”
Carleton is known as a rape campus, according to Montgomery, and the administration’s response to high profile incidents over the years has been “appalling.”
“If administrators really cared, they would put this [policy] at the top of their list,” she said.
According to Carleton University Equity Services, 15-25 per cent of female students will experience some form of sexual violence throughout their academic career. Incidences of sexual assaults on campuses across North America have been more frequently reported in recent years.
The following consultation meeting is scheduled for March 23. Once the policy has been developed, it will be up to the board of governors to adopt it, the same body that has refused to hold open meetings and is largely unaccountable to students.
Montgomery says students need to keep pushing for the demands of the Carleton community to be implemented by the university administration.
“While it was a silent protest of respect for the processes of the Senate, the silence also represents something many survivors face in their difficulties of navigating the systems around sexual assault.”
This article first appeared in the Leveller Vol. 8 No. 6 (March 2016).
