FREDERICTON – As they work to establish and improve their sexual assault policies, some N.B. universities say an aspect of those policies is realizing sexual violence comes in many forms – including online.
Director of Counselling Services at UNB, Rice Fuller, said the university had one complaint last year related to an anonymous social media app on campus.
“Students were putting statements out on Yik Yak and asking why the university hadn’t done anything about it. Well, we really can’t take action about a statement posted on Facebook or posted on Yik Yak allegedly that a sexual assault took place,” said Fuller.
“Certainly we can do our best to try and look into it, but really what we need is somebody, the survivor or a friend of theirs, coming forward and saying, ‘this happened.'”
UNB is working to establish a sexual assault policy, and they say it will be complete by the end of this academic year.
READ MORE: ‘No one knew how to respond’: N.B. universities to improve sexual assault policies
Fuller said they’re reviewing how social media will play a part in the policy.
An example of one of the comments displayed on the app read: “Throwback to that one time I was mentioned in yaks but it was people calling me out for being a whore.”
At St. Thomas University, spokesperson Jeffrey Carleton says social media will be an aspect of their two new sexual violence policies.
“In university and in societies it’s not necessarily just a physical aspect. It deals with all aspects of bullying, of cyber-stalking, comments online – all of those issues are covered under these new policies,” he said.
The two new policies include a non-academic misconduct policy and a sexual violence policy.
Both identify the protocols and steps that the university takes in the event of an sexual violence allegation.
UNB working to teach the ‘wide spectrum’ of sexual violence
Natasha Harris says she was catcalled and followed by a group of four men in a car while she was walking home from work.
The first-year student says it’s become common.
“They followed me for a good five to ten minutes before they had turned away into a parking lot but it was, it was terrifying,” she said.
“There’s not a day that I don’t walk down Prospect Street, in shorts or whatever, where people are yelling out their windows at me, it’s really terrifying.”
That’s just one example of sexual harassment that UNB officials are teaching students and faculty about in their “Bringing in the Bystander” sexual assault awareness program.
“Most of us think of sexual violence, we think of sexual assault or rape. That’s on the extreme end. There are many other things on the less extreme ends of the continuum, things like groping or fondling, and then on down to misogynistic comments,” said Rice Fuller.
Fuller says the training is teaching students and faculty how they can intervene if they witness a case of sexual violence.
“It teaches them to be active bystanders across that continuum of sexual violence and ultimately, ideally, changes the culture here on campus about what we’re willing to accept and what we’re not willing to accept.”
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