OPINION 5
Tuesday, October 17, 2017
Editor-in-Chief Nicholas Jasinski editor@mcgilltribune.com Creative Director Noah Sutton nsutton@mcgilltribune.com Managing Editors Audrey Carleton acarleton@mcgilltribune.com Emma Avery eavery@mcgilltribune.com Selin Altuntur saltuntur@mcgilltribune.com News Editors Holly Cabrera, Domenic Casciato, Calvin Trottier-Chi news@mcgilltribune.com Opinion Editors Jackie Houston & Alexandra Harvey opinion@mcgilltribune.com Science & Technology Editor Izze Siemann scitech@mcgilltribune.com Student Living Editor Grace Bahler studentliving@mcgilltribune.com Features Editor Marie Labrosse features@mcgilltribune.com Arts & Entertainment Editors Dylan Adamson & Ariella Garmaise arts@mcgilltribune.com Sports Editors Stephen Gill & Selwynne Hawkins sports@mcgilltribune.com Design Editors Daniel Freed & Elli Slavitch design@mcgilltribune.com Photo Editor Ava Zwolinski photo@mcgilltribune.com Multimedia Editor April Barrett multimedia@mcgilltribune.com Web Developers Daniel Lutes webdev@mcgilltribune.com Julia Kafato online@mcgilltribune.com Copy Editor Ayanna De Graff copy@mcgilltribune.com
In the 2018 Quacquarelli Symonds World University Rankings, McGill was the second best school in Canada. Maclean’s just named the university the number one medical and doctoral school in Canada, for the 13th year in a row. In contrast, last week the interuniversity student group Our Turn gave McGill’s Policy Against Sexual Violence—passed in November 2016—a C-. The group’s report, distributed by the Students’ Society of McGill University (SSMU) on Oct. 11, provides a comparative, quantitative analysis of the sexual violence policies in place at 14 universities across Canada, out of which McGill placed eighth. The report provides a set of concrete recommendations for improvement, developed through consultations with sexual assault survivors, existing comprehensive policies, and experts in best practices in preventing and responding to sexual violence. It provides a standardized, central resource on what an ideal campus sexual assault policy should—and should not—look like. It is survivor-focused, emphasizing the need for multiple avenues of support for survivors of sexual violence, while also attempting to take on the prior causes of sexual assault on campus, such as a lack of education and the pervasiveness of rape culture. It’s an
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Nicholas Jasinski, Daniel Minuk, Katherine Hutter, Julia Métraux, Anthony Kuan, Elli Slavitch, Holly Cabrera, Jeeventh Kaur, Katherine Milazzo, Becca Hoff
Contributors
Amanda Fiore, Ana Mayne, Ari Charles, Arshaaq Jiffry, Avleen Mokha, Benji Taubenblatt, Caitlin Kindig, Caitlyn Atkinson, Catherine Morrison, Ceci Steyn, Cherry Wu, Cherry Wu, Cicily Du, Daria Kiseleva, Elijah Wenzel, Emma Hameau, Fionn Adamian, Gabe Helfant, Jade PrévostManuel, Jasmine Acharya, Jen Wang, Karl Neumann, Keating Reid, Keira Seidenberg, Kevin Reynolds, Margaux Delalex, Mary Keith, Natalie Vineberg, Nina Russell, Owen Gibbs, Patrick Beacham, River Ludwick, Sam Lottes, Sam Wendel, Sanchi Bhalla, Summer Liu, Summer Liu, Sydney King
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EDITORIAL
On sexual violence policy reform, it’s McGill’s turn
Izze Siemann Science & Technology Editor Like many others at McGill, I come from a background of multiple languages. My father grew up in Wolfsburg, Germany—a relatively small country town, about an hour away from Berlin. After 20 years of living in a rainy climate, he decided to venture south in search of sun and a happier version of himself. He landed in Padua, northern Italy, where, 15 years later, he met my mother and they had my brother. My mother grew up in Berkeley, CA, and moved to Italy after receiving her Master’s degree in French. As a result, language has been a ruling component of my upbringing.
entirely student-driven initiative, and miles ahead of lagging and bare-bones provincial legislation on this issue. More crucially, however, the report is a vital reminder of the real and unacceptable prevalence of sexual assault on university campuses. A comprehensive policy framework to combat campus sexual assault, which includes preventative, educational, and survivor support measures, is essential, and must be treated as such. That means, chiefly, that just having a policy in place isn’t enough. Students, SSMU, and the McGill administration also need to work to ensure that McGill’s policy actually works, by bringing it closer to the ambitious national threshold that Our Turn sets. By extension, it must be able to evolve to better meet the needs of the students affected by sexual violence and sexual assault on campus. Our Turn originated with the experience of Ryerson University students. The group of students that would go on to form Our Turn advocated for reform of the school’s sexual violence policy, through a widely supported open letter. The policy’s final draft failed to reflect these student concerns. This led to an ongoing campaign from students to a deaf administration, geared at reopening the policy for revamp. Ryerson’s policy has since been updated to score an A-. The experience of Ryerson
students matches the story at many universities. When McGill’s sexual violence policy was drafted and subsequently approved by Senate, it was widely criticized. Many flagged concerns about its clarity on concrete reforms, as well as transparency in the student consultation and amendment process. Those concerns were wellplaced, as later confirmed by Our Turn’s abysmal review. Our Turn is an invaluable resource. In the absence of any national legislation or inquiry on campus sexual assault, by taking the issue beyond the scope of McGill—or any one campus, for that matter—the inter-school group has made it a national concern. Moreover, it solidifies and amplifies the message coming from students to their university administrations and governments: Sexual violence on campus is a pervasive threat to student safety and wellbeing, and needs to be addressed. The nature of sexual violence presents unique challenges from an administrative standpoint, but it can also present dire harm to survivors and affected students. As a survivor-centered, independent, and dedicated body, Our Turn sets the bar above and beyond that of any one single university attending to other institutional concerns. While exact criteria may be up for debate, the value of having any substantive,
national standard of support for sexual assault survivors cannot be overstated. McGill must respond to the recommendations of the report, and set a timeline on how it will update its policy accordingly. The existing Policy Against Sexual Violence is subject to triennial review. Given that it is sitting at a C-, that time frame is insufficient. SSMU, meanwhile, needs to follow through on its pledge to the organization, by implementing its campus advocacy task force and setting in motion the suggested reforms at the McGill Senate level. For their part, students ought to take the time to read the report, conduct further research on best practices across campuses, and critically consider where McGill’s Policy Against Sexual Violence is at right now, and where it needs to be. As the necessity and existence of Our Turn shows, progress on preventing campus sexual violence falls primarily on affected campus communities themselves. Provincial and federal government actors need to address the gaps in existing provincial campus sexual assault legislation. But, until they do, university administrations, student unions, and students themselves need to continue to lead the push for education and awareness on campus, and due resources and support for sexual violence survivors. To borrow a phrase, it’s our turn.
The world is larger than English Prioritizing language education, whether in school or independently, has a significant impact on traveling and living experiences, as well as development. Learning multiple languages shows the complementary, rather than conflictual, nature of different countries, languages, and cultures. This helps deconstruct barriers to both political and cultural engagement. Montreal’s own bilingual nature supports the values of multilingualism and multiculturalism, as it maintains both anglophone and francophone cultures. Being able to communicate effectively in more than one language opens the mind and allows people to access new cultures, transcending language barriers that often prevent us from seeing beyond what we know. Often, no direct translations exist between one language and another as a result of differing sentence structures, idiomatic expressions, and the vocabulary words themselves. A scholar studying two works in their original languages has deeper insights than others studying translations. Politicians working on international policy—or domestic policy in a bilingual country such as Canada, for that matter—can show cultural respect and create better policies speaking in the native language of whom they
represent. Multilingualism has value above and beyond its services to culture. For
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Learning multiple languages shows the complementary, rather than conflictual, nature of different countries, languages, and cultures.
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example, according to speech-language pathologist Lauren Lowry, children who grow up bilingually have proven to be more creative, better at planning, and more capable of solving complex problems than monolinguals. The effects of aging are even diminished in bilinguals. By supporting a bilingual culture, Montreal’s future citizens reap these benefits. Growing up, I’ve heard numerous people tell me that they don’t need to
learn any more languages, because English is one of the most popular and can be used around the globe. However, this limits the places where anglophones can travel in a meaningful way, and leads to the colonialist notion that English, and English-speaking European and North American countries, are superior to other countries and their ways of life. In most American states, there are no language requirements in high school, according to their respective graduation requirements, whereas all schools in Germany and Canada require taking at least one language other than their mother tongue, and many require two. Although I was lucky to understand the importance of language from a young age, with English, German, French, and Italian swirling around my house, that doesn’t mean that those who were not given the same opportunity shouldn’t try. My favourite YouTubers, Damon and Jo, have a travel blog all about traveling as young adults—how to travel when you’re broke, what the life of a traveler is like, why becoming involved in language and culture is vital to traveling, and, of course, how to learn languages without paying for expensive classes and books. We have all the resources we need to find the value of linguistic diversity—we just need to use them.