Can Colour-Blind Communication be Culturally Responsive? Input on Sexual Violence Policies and Services from Culturally Matched Student Focus Groups (original) (raw)
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Communicating About Sexual Violence on Campus: A University Case Study
African Safety Promotion, 2019
South African universities are in the midst of highly visible struggles around decolonisation. Over the past two years, these struggles have foregrounded racialised, classed, gendered and other forms of exclusion. These are being challenged both by black academic staff as well as by black students. Most visibly and deeply connected, have been the challenges to the ways in which universities, as particular types of institutions, have dealt with sexual violence and harassment of its womxn 1 students. In this context we ask how the University of Cape Town, as one particular case study formally communicates about sexual violence on its campus. In an archival analysis of the university's public communications on sexual violence during 2015 and 2016, we ask what kinds of messages it conveys about violence, victims and perpetrators. We are interested in the ways in which the university positions itself in relation to the issue of sexual violence. The paper finds that the university's institutional discourse on sexual violence produces and reproduces some of the same discourses on sexual violence in both the public and media more broadly.
Comparative and International Education/Éducation comparée et internationale, 2022
This article reports findings from a qualitative study exploring how international students and campus staff in urban universities in Canada perceive sexual violence and prevention initiatives enacted in their university. The study rests upon personal interviews and three focus groups involving a total of 95 participants (64 students from 25 countries and 31 campus support staff members who work directly with these learners). The analysis of these narratives focuses on three pivotal areas in sexual violence prevention: awareness, incident reporting patterns, and fostering a "culture of consent." It reveals important misalignment between the needs and knowledges of international students and the Western, ethnocentric cultural logic of campus approaches. Instead, international students seek peer-led discussions about gender inequality, sexuality, safe sex, and the role of religion, culture, and parents within their own communities and countries of origin. They also seek safe spaces to think through and debate the kind of politics or actions that could enable changes within their home countries and the world.
Canadian Journal of Higher Education , 2019
Faced with a growing demand for adequate policies and programs that meaningfully address sexual violence on campus, the provinces of British Columbia, Ontario and Manitoba have introduced legislation requiring all post-secondary institutions to institute a sexual assault policy. The remaining provinces and territories do not have similar legislation. In absence of such legislation, using the case study of Alberta, we examined how equipped post-secondary institutions in this province are to assist students in need. Utilizing publicly available data we examined: 1) whether Alberta's post-secondary institutions have a sexual violence policy which is readily and easily accessible to the student ; and 2) the ease with which students can access university resources and support services for sexual violence. The results indicate that most institutions do not have an accessible policy and support services for students in need. We are hopeful that this study can inform those designing and advocating for sexual violence policies on campus to institute measures to clarify institutions' sexual violence policies, increase accessibility to those policies, create policies where they are missing, and work on clarifying the availability of resources for students on and off campus. * This manuscript is the result of co-authorship and author names are listed in alphabetical order.
Journal of Transcultural Nursing
Introduction: The purpose of this study was to explore how women of color affiliated with a large public university in the United States evaluated involving authorities in cases of intimate partner violence (IPV) and/or sexual assault (SA) and to discover if structural stressors such as racism or sexism influenced their thinking. Methodology: Surveys on perceived ethnic discrimination, depression, trauma history, stress, social support, resilience, and sleep disturbance were completed by 87 self-identified women of color. All women also participated in one of several focus groups on IPV and SA. Results: Roughly half of participants had experienced SA and about a third experienced IPV. Participants identifying as Latinx/Hispanic or Black/African American reported the greatest experiences of structural stressors and also felt there was not always a potential safety gain with reporting IPV and/or SA. Discussion: The results of this study suggest universities must create more culturally...
Sexual Violence on Campus: Differences Across Gender and Sexual Minority Status
Journal of Adolescent Health, 2018
Purpose: Sexual violence is a pervasive problem on university campuses. Although previous work has documented greater vulnerability for sexual violence among sexual and gender minority students , little is known about contextual variation in vulnerability to this kind of violence. The goals of the current study were (1) to identify vulnerability among sexual and gender minority students with regard to sexual violence, and (2) to explore if the context of this violence differs across sexual and gender minority status. Methods: Undergraduate students (ages 18–24) from six francophone universities in Quebec, Canada (N = 4,264) completed online questionnaires regarding their experience of sexual violence, as well as the context of these acts (e.g., the gender of the perpetrator, the status of the perpetrator, and the location of the violence). They also provided information regarding their sexual and gender minority status. Binary logistic regressions were conducted to assess for variation in experiencing sexual violence across sexual and gender minority status. Results: Transgender/nonbinary students generally reported higher levels of sexual violence than their cisgender peers, while variation occurred with regard to vulnerability across sexual identity subgroups. Few differences in context were observed across sexual minority identity. Transgender/ nonbinary students were significantly more likely to report sexual violence in athletic contexts and during volunteering activities compared to their cisgender peers. Conclusions: Findings highlight the higher levels of vulnerability for sexual violence among gender minority and some sexual minority university students. They also point to the contexts in which such violence occurs, suggesting specific strategies for prevention.
The Internationalization of a Sexual Violence Policy
2021
ABC University (ABCU; a pseudonym) is a Canadian university that has seen a significant increase in international students in the past several years. Institutional infrastructure has not fully adjusted to the new student demographic, meaning that processes, policies, and resources still cater to domestic student needs. The problem of practice (PoP) addressed in this Organizational Improvement Plan (OIP) is the lack of intercultural perspectives and international student considerations represented in the ABCU 2020 sexual violence policy draft. Policies that protect student health and well-being must be inclusive and responsive to the needs of the student population. Drawing on recommendations outlined in a research project report, this OIP discusses why policy reform is necessary through critical and intersectional perspectives. Moreover, it provides a framework for change that was developed using Cawsey et al.'s (2016) change path model and Lasswell's (1956) policy cycle, while being complimented by Kotter's (1996) sense of urgency. Four possible solutions are presented to resolve the PoP. The chosen solution discusses how the policy should be changed, with supporting artifacts developed and added that address gaps outlined in the research project report. The OIP continues with a detailed implementation for the chosen solution through transformative and transformational leadership approaches, followed by a sustainable monitoring and evaluation plan. It concludes by discussing possible next steps and future considerations upon OIP completion. Implementation of this OIP will create a safer and more equitable campus for all students at ABCU and set precedent for more inclusive sexual violence policies in higher education.
Behavioral Sciences
Sexual violence in the higher education is an epidemic of global proportions. Scholars conclude that the individual and collective silence that surrounds such violence enables its perpetration and that violence will only be eradicated when we break this silence. In this paper, we used two participatory visual methods (PVM), collage and storytelling, to explore what sexual violence at university looks like and what it means to woman students. Two groups of student teachers in two South African universities were engaged in collage and storytelling workshops in late 2017 and early 2018, respectively. We thematically analyzed the issues that emerged from the data, drawing on transformative learning theory to explore how our approach might help women students to break the silence around sexual violence and stimulate critical dialogue to address it. Our analysis suggests that these visual tools enabled deep reflections on the meaning and impact of sexual violence, particularly for women. ...
The Response to Sexual Violence at Ontario University Campuses
This Report is an examination of the police and institutional responses to sexual violence at Ontario university campuses. It is based on a comprehensive desk study of the extant literature as well as site studies at three Ontario universities: Carleton University, Lakehead University and the University of Waterloo. The study was conducted over a four-month period (March-June 2016) and includes approximately 120 hours of interview data. We interviewed three respondent groups: (1) campus administrators and service providers (n=50), (2) campus and local police (n=29), and (3) sexual violence survivors (n=18) and students (n=29).
2009.Coercive sexual practices and gender-based violence on a university campus. Agenda 80: 22
2016
When a 22-year-old University of the Western Cape (UWC) female student was stabbed to death by her boyfriend (another student) in her room in the university residence on 25 August 2008, the entire campus was left reeling. Bringing the stark reality of gender-based violence (GBV) so close to home, the tragedy was a powerful reminder of the limits of more than a decade of legislative change, concerted activism, education, consciousness-raising and knowledge production aimed at challenging gender-based power inequalities. This article reflects on the relationships between violence, coercion and heterosexuality on a specific campus by drawing on data generated by a qualitative study at UWC that explored student constructions of heterosexual relationships in the light of national imperatives around HIV/AIDS and GBV. Involving 20 focus groups with male and female students over the course of 2008 and 2009, the study revealed that unequal and coercive practices are common in heterosexual re...