Sexual Violence On Our Campuses and How We Can Help Our Members
**Trigger warning - what follows below are my reflections on the topic of sexual violence in post-secondary**
This week I attended the CUPE National Sector Council Conference - a meeting of CUPE locals from across the country, to spend 3 days in dedicated meetings from the sectors we work in. For me, I spent most of my time in the post-secondary sector. A large part of our agenda was set aside to start the serious conversation about sexual violence on our campuses. It brought back a lot of memories and the discussion over the past few days still has me processing.
I have a long history at UBC. I started at UBC as a student in the fall of 1999. I remember when going through student orientations the many warnings I heard everywhere I went on how dangerous the campus was - at night, in the bars (watch your drinks carefully) and in the residences. We were all given rape whistles and the numbers to Safewalk, the AMS service to have someone walk you to your car (I was a commuter student). There were also the emergency blue lights as a safety precaution that lit some of the dark walkways on campus - if you felt the need, you would hit the button and be directly connected to campus security - they were installed as a deterrent to predators and for most women I know who had to use them, they worked.
Universities are bastions of freedom - intellectual freedom, physical freedom (most people grow up and leave the shackles of adolescence where they can do whatever they want) and of course sexual freedom. For the first time, students are living on their own experimenting in anything they want. The Student Union was where you went for free condoms (along with information about birth control and STDs). It’s a bunch of young people, their hormones going crazy without the supervision and control of parents/guardians. We’ve all been there - it’s nothing new or secret - it’s just what it is. And not a whole lot is different from when I was a student 17 years ago other than there are more people on campus. The danger is still there - the attacks are still happening. When you think about it, it’s kinda crazy that it’s taken this long for the University to make sexual violence and the prevention of it a priority...
UBC is a large institution - (numbers are estimates) around 60,000 undergrads, 23,000 faculty and staff, 12,000 graduate students and now a University Neighbourhood Association whose membership now consists of residents on campus whose only connection to the university is simply because they live there. That’s a lot of people. We are also situated in an isolated area in the westernmost part of the City of Vancouver surrounded by forests and beaches.
The campus is huge, dark, dense and, dangerous.
I graduated in 2003 and returned to campus as a staff member in 2007. Fast forward to my time as a staff member and member of our union. Upon reflecting on all of my time at UBC, I remember being in a University Health and Safety Committee meeting (representing the local) where the discussion of the emergency blue lights was on the agenda because the majority of them had burned out and/or the phone line to security was damaged or severed. Risk Management Services (don’t get me started on their name change from Health, Safety and Environment..) actually asked us if the cost of the blue light phones would be worth the $+/- 27k or not and were considering cancelling the program. I immediately put my hand up and spoke my truth. I had to use those phones once and I believe it saved my life. In fact, there’s an area of campus that I still avoid 14 years later because of what (could have) happened. I know several women who have had to use the blue phones and knowing that this monetary “ask” was minimal for an institution the size of UBC - it made me FURIOUS. I waited for someone else to agree - I thought it was a no-brainer. I looked around the room and then noticed that there was a small number of women at the meeting. The men had nothing to say, not even an acknowledgement to anything I said.
I thought to myself - what if it were their daughter/sister/wife/friend? Is a woman’s life really worth less than the bottom line?
One of the other women in the meeting (who was a management rep) followed and raised the point that men and women look at safety very differently and that she agreed with me. I was disheartened that it was only two of us speaking up and was extremely disappointed that the other union reps were silent on this issue. The committee eventually tabled the issue to a future meeting. Later, I heard from some of the male members of the committee that they had never thought of the issue from a woman’s perspective because it simply has never been something they’ve had to deal with personally and that they wished they had spoken up. I don’t remember the exact timeline but the University eventually did the right thing and fixed the blue lights and in fact, installed more of them.
Over the past few years sexual violence and rape culture on campus has been prevalent in the news and in our unions. I remember racist and rape chants heard in Frosh Week events. Where this was something that these particular students from a particular faculty had always done - this time, someone spok In 2013 there were a string of attacks on female students - the perpetrator was never caught. Then it got really bad. A number of brave survivors came forward and disclosed their experiences of sexual assault at the hands of coworkers, supervisors and peers. The Fifth Estate aired a documentary about the incidents at UBC and York University and the University had to respond. This resulted in UBC establishing two committees. The first, a Sexual Assault Policy Committee which would be co-chaired by the VP of Equity and Inclusion and University Counsel. The second was an expert panel made up of academics, frontline social workers, feminists and survivors to put together a comprehensive set of recommendations which would cover education, prevention, policy and process of a sexual assault policy at UBC. At the same time all of this was happening, the BC government passed legislation that would force each post-secondary institution in the province to develop and implement a stand alone sexual assault policy.
Then, the draft of Policy 131 came out and it was disappointing. They released the draft and started consultation meetings with various stakeholders on campus (of which we were one) before the discussion paper from the panel was released. It was a little weird. The policy itself is very light on process and comprehensive on value statements and principles which is good because it does make the institution accountable but without a process to protect the campus community there’s not much value in the policy. We brought up a few very practical questions - what happens when someone discloses or reports an incident? If it’s a worker and there is time loss, do you have to fill out a WCB claim? Who sees those incident reports? Given the nature of the incident, would they be recorded in the online database for all incidents and accidents at UBC and who has access to that information? Has any of this been contemplated? I will be curious to know what the response will be from the committee and how the second draft will read once the process questions have been dealt with in detail. Our locals need to be a part of these conversations if only to remind our employers that our members play an important role at UBC and are often the frontline responders for students and staff to disclose and report incidents of sexual violence.
Since our consultation process, there has been at least one incident at UBC in the news. A female student was violently attacked in her residence by a male student who went as far as holding a knife to her throat. During our meetings this week, we just heard of an incident at the University of Ottawa where a “game” on campus is being played where a list of sexual favours are given points and students are trying to get the most points in order to belong to a group. Can you imagine the pressure they must feel in order to belong or fit in? The number of times women (and men) will be groped, kissed, or even raped because of this “game?” This is the reality of what our members are dealing with and I am so grateful that the Post-Secondary Sector Council planning team made this issue a priority so we could at the very least support each other.
I will admit, I was really nervous when I agreed to help frame the conversation on sexual assault policies in universities and colleges in our meetings. This subject is triggering, sensitive and very difficult to address but it happens and it affects our members. I tried to keep my presentation as concise and focused as possible (the opposite of this blog post, haha). The conversation was very focused on policy development and suggestions, discussion on how we ensure that our locals are considered as stakeholders in these processes and political action. I relayed the story of the March 8th lobby on government that I participated in with the BC Fed’s Women’s Rights Committee. We lobbied government on the lack of sexual assault evidence (rape) kits across the province and the next day, NDP MLA Maureen Karagianis, asked the Minister of Health about them and he committed to looking at UBC and possibly putting one on campus. At the CUPE BC convention in April, Vancouver Coastal Health announced that UBC would have a rape kit on campus and I believe had we not brought that information to the NDP for them to orchestrate the issue in question period, this would not have happened. It felt good to relay a success story during a very dark topic. We had practical conversations about safety language in our collective agreements, the elements of a good policy, political action and definition of sexual harassment, sexual violence, and sexual assault.
The following day we had an open dialogue on the issue as it pertained to the plenary session on harassment and violence in the workplace. The members in the room got up to the mic and delved deep into their own experiences. Whether it was hearing of members being raped at work by coworkers, how evil gossip can be, and the expectation to participate in sexual assault policy development can be overwhelming to some of us because we are survivors ourselves. Heavy stuff and you could hear a pin drop - it was silent. As a union president people disclose things to me all the time - some of them worse than others. I do think that because I’m a woman, women will come to me for advice for workplace issues and then it might evolve into a discussion on the impact of an abusive relationship on them in the workplace.
We are there to listen but we are not trained social workers.
I’m not one to shy away from public speaking or from a microphone. If I want to say something, I’m going to say it. And this was going to be hard. I felt that I was on the verge of tears and hoping like hell I could keep it together to articulate what I was feeling.
Something we don’t talk about in the labour movement is the impact on us who support members who are living through and disclosing horrific things. I’ve had to call EFAP a couple of times to debrief about particular conversations (and as soon as I said it, others vocally agreed). The national union has put a lot of energy and effort into training stewards in supporting our members with mental health/health and safety but there isn’t anything in place to support the ones supporting our members. We need help. We need to be able to feel safe to ask for support. We need to be able to debrief and have a system in place to ensure that our stewards are not internalizing these issues for their own self-care. We are the best advocates for our members but we suck at advocating for ourselves. We need to be able to talk about these issues. I knew I struck a chord because I felt supported and heard a chorus a “yeses.” As soon as I sat back down, a sister who I had only met a few minutes earlier, put her arm around me and we hugged. I looked around the room and saw it happening at other tables. This isn't new, but this is the first time I've experienced talking openly and honestly about what we are going through.
The conversation was intense - more and more people came forward to tell their stories.
Our National officers were in the room and I hope they truly understand some of what we are dealing with.
We need CUPE National to be a leader and move on the following things and we cannot wait for a national convention to pass a resolution for this work to happen:
I want to thank the members of the post-secondary sector meeting for their generosity, honesty and solidarity.
That is all.
This week I attended the CUPE National Sector Council Conference - a meeting of CUPE locals from across the country, to spend 3 days in dedicated meetings from the sectors we work in. For me, I spent most of my time in the post-secondary sector. A large part of our agenda was set aside to start the serious conversation about sexual violence on our campuses. It brought back a lot of memories and the discussion over the past few days still has me processing.
I have a long history at UBC. I started at UBC as a student in the fall of 1999. I remember when going through student orientations the many warnings I heard everywhere I went on how dangerous the campus was - at night, in the bars (watch your drinks carefully) and in the residences. We were all given rape whistles and the numbers to Safewalk, the AMS service to have someone walk you to your car (I was a commuter student). There were also the emergency blue lights as a safety precaution that lit some of the dark walkways on campus - if you felt the need, you would hit the button and be directly connected to campus security - they were installed as a deterrent to predators and for most women I know who had to use them, they worked.
Universities are bastions of freedom - intellectual freedom, physical freedom (most people grow up and leave the shackles of adolescence where they can do whatever they want) and of course sexual freedom. For the first time, students are living on their own experimenting in anything they want. The Student Union was where you went for free condoms (along with information about birth control and STDs). It’s a bunch of young people, their hormones going crazy without the supervision and control of parents/guardians. We’ve all been there - it’s nothing new or secret - it’s just what it is. And not a whole lot is different from when I was a student 17 years ago other than there are more people on campus. The danger is still there - the attacks are still happening. When you think about it, it’s kinda crazy that it’s taken this long for the University to make sexual violence and the prevention of it a priority...
UBC is a large institution - (numbers are estimates) around 60,000 undergrads, 23,000 faculty and staff, 12,000 graduate students and now a University Neighbourhood Association whose membership now consists of residents on campus whose only connection to the university is simply because they live there. That’s a lot of people. We are also situated in an isolated area in the westernmost part of the City of Vancouver surrounded by forests and beaches.
The campus is huge, dark, dense and, dangerous.
I graduated in 2003 and returned to campus as a staff member in 2007. Fast forward to my time as a staff member and member of our union. Upon reflecting on all of my time at UBC, I remember being in a University Health and Safety Committee meeting (representing the local) where the discussion of the emergency blue lights was on the agenda because the majority of them had burned out and/or the phone line to security was damaged or severed. Risk Management Services (don’t get me started on their name change from Health, Safety and Environment..) actually asked us if the cost of the blue light phones would be worth the $+/- 27k or not and were considering cancelling the program. I immediately put my hand up and spoke my truth. I had to use those phones once and I believe it saved my life. In fact, there’s an area of campus that I still avoid 14 years later because of what (could have) happened. I know several women who have had to use the blue phones and knowing that this monetary “ask” was minimal for an institution the size of UBC - it made me FURIOUS. I waited for someone else to agree - I thought it was a no-brainer. I looked around the room and then noticed that there was a small number of women at the meeting. The men had nothing to say, not even an acknowledgement to anything I said.
I thought to myself - what if it were their daughter/sister/wife/friend? Is a woman’s life really worth less than the bottom line?
One of the other women in the meeting (who was a management rep) followed and raised the point that men and women look at safety very differently and that she agreed with me. I was disheartened that it was only two of us speaking up and was extremely disappointed that the other union reps were silent on this issue. The committee eventually tabled the issue to a future meeting. Later, I heard from some of the male members of the committee that they had never thought of the issue from a woman’s perspective because it simply has never been something they’ve had to deal with personally and that they wished they had spoken up. I don’t remember the exact timeline but the University eventually did the right thing and fixed the blue lights and in fact, installed more of them.
Over the past few years sexual violence and rape culture on campus has been prevalent in the news and in our unions. I remember racist and rape chants heard in Frosh Week events. Where this was something that these particular students from a particular faculty had always done - this time, someone spok In 2013 there were a string of attacks on female students - the perpetrator was never caught. Then it got really bad. A number of brave survivors came forward and disclosed their experiences of sexual assault at the hands of coworkers, supervisors and peers. The Fifth Estate aired a documentary about the incidents at UBC and York University and the University had to respond. This resulted in UBC establishing two committees. The first, a Sexual Assault Policy Committee which would be co-chaired by the VP of Equity and Inclusion and University Counsel. The second was an expert panel made up of academics, frontline social workers, feminists and survivors to put together a comprehensive set of recommendations which would cover education, prevention, policy and process of a sexual assault policy at UBC. At the same time all of this was happening, the BC government passed legislation that would force each post-secondary institution in the province to develop and implement a stand alone sexual assault policy.
Then, the draft of Policy 131 came out and it was disappointing. They released the draft and started consultation meetings with various stakeholders on campus (of which we were one) before the discussion paper from the panel was released. It was a little weird. The policy itself is very light on process and comprehensive on value statements and principles which is good because it does make the institution accountable but without a process to protect the campus community there’s not much value in the policy. We brought up a few very practical questions - what happens when someone discloses or reports an incident? If it’s a worker and there is time loss, do you have to fill out a WCB claim? Who sees those incident reports? Given the nature of the incident, would they be recorded in the online database for all incidents and accidents at UBC and who has access to that information? Has any of this been contemplated? I will be curious to know what the response will be from the committee and how the second draft will read once the process questions have been dealt with in detail. Our locals need to be a part of these conversations if only to remind our employers that our members play an important role at UBC and are often the frontline responders for students and staff to disclose and report incidents of sexual violence.
Since our consultation process, there has been at least one incident at UBC in the news. A female student was violently attacked in her residence by a male student who went as far as holding a knife to her throat. During our meetings this week, we just heard of an incident at the University of Ottawa where a “game” on campus is being played where a list of sexual favours are given points and students are trying to get the most points in order to belong to a group. Can you imagine the pressure they must feel in order to belong or fit in? The number of times women (and men) will be groped, kissed, or even raped because of this “game?” This is the reality of what our members are dealing with and I am so grateful that the Post-Secondary Sector Council planning team made this issue a priority so we could at the very least support each other.
I will admit, I was really nervous when I agreed to help frame the conversation on sexual assault policies in universities and colleges in our meetings. This subject is triggering, sensitive and very difficult to address but it happens and it affects our members. I tried to keep my presentation as concise and focused as possible (the opposite of this blog post, haha). The conversation was very focused on policy development and suggestions, discussion on how we ensure that our locals are considered as stakeholders in these processes and political action. I relayed the story of the March 8th lobby on government that I participated in with the BC Fed’s Women’s Rights Committee. We lobbied government on the lack of sexual assault evidence (rape) kits across the province and the next day, NDP MLA Maureen Karagianis, asked the Minister of Health about them and he committed to looking at UBC and possibly putting one on campus. At the CUPE BC convention in April, Vancouver Coastal Health announced that UBC would have a rape kit on campus and I believe had we not brought that information to the NDP for them to orchestrate the issue in question period, this would not have happened. It felt good to relay a success story during a very dark topic. We had practical conversations about safety language in our collective agreements, the elements of a good policy, political action and definition of sexual harassment, sexual violence, and sexual assault.
The following day we had an open dialogue on the issue as it pertained to the plenary session on harassment and violence in the workplace. The members in the room got up to the mic and delved deep into their own experiences. Whether it was hearing of members being raped at work by coworkers, how evil gossip can be, and the expectation to participate in sexual assault policy development can be overwhelming to some of us because we are survivors ourselves. Heavy stuff and you could hear a pin drop - it was silent. As a union president people disclose things to me all the time - some of them worse than others. I do think that because I’m a woman, women will come to me for advice for workplace issues and then it might evolve into a discussion on the impact of an abusive relationship on them in the workplace.
We are there to listen but we are not trained social workers.
I’m not one to shy away from public speaking or from a microphone. If I want to say something, I’m going to say it. And this was going to be hard. I felt that I was on the verge of tears and hoping like hell I could keep it together to articulate what I was feeling.
Something we don’t talk about in the labour movement is the impact on us who support members who are living through and disclosing horrific things. I’ve had to call EFAP a couple of times to debrief about particular conversations (and as soon as I said it, others vocally agreed). The national union has put a lot of energy and effort into training stewards in supporting our members with mental health/health and safety but there isn’t anything in place to support the ones supporting our members. We need help. We need to be able to feel safe to ask for support. We need to be able to debrief and have a system in place to ensure that our stewards are not internalizing these issues for their own self-care. We are the best advocates for our members but we suck at advocating for ourselves. We need to be able to talk about these issues. I knew I struck a chord because I felt supported and heard a chorus a “yeses.” As soon as I sat back down, a sister who I had only met a few minutes earlier, put her arm around me and we hugged. I looked around the room and saw it happening at other tables. This isn't new, but this is the first time I've experienced talking openly and honestly about what we are going through.
The conversation was intense - more and more people came forward to tell their stories.
Our National officers were in the room and I hope they truly understand some of what we are dealing with.
We need CUPE National to be a leader and move on the following things and we cannot wait for a national convention to pass a resolution for this work to happen:
- Creation of a toolkit for sexual violence at work (similar to the domestic violence bargaining tool kit) where we can start to bargain language in our contracts that addresses this issue.
- Creation of a program to support stewards and union members in their support of others - to ensure that there are critical incident stress responders available for CUPE members to contact if needed
- Training on the continuum of sexual violence
- Bystander training for all CUPE members and CUPE staff to create a culture of true respect in our union - whether it’s in our locals or regional offices.
I want to thank the members of the post-secondary sector meeting for their generosity, honesty and solidarity.
That is all.
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