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Student groups learn the culture of consent
Campus association Justice for Women Manitoba provides workshops
MALAK ABAS, STAFF
On Aug. 20, the Commerce Students’ Association hosted the first consent culture workshop of the school year, and it will not be the last.
U of M student associations can participate in consent culture training by contacting Justice for Women Manitoba, a student group that advocates for and provides consent education on campus.
“We find our message is best received when the recipients are actively involved”
—
Vatineh Magaji, Justice for Women
Manitoba president
Vatineh Magaji, president of Justice for Women Manitoba, said spreading information is the main goal of the student group.
“The group focuses on education based discussion, emphasizing that people from all knowledge backgrounds are invited to share and learn from one another,” Magaji said.
The workshops Justice for Women
Manitoba provide explore healthy ways to seek and receive consent in hopes of reducing the instances of sexual assault, harassment and violence on campus and beyond.
Consent culture workshops are 90 minutes and interactive.
“We find our message is best received when the recipients are actively involved,” Magaji said. “So our facilitators work to provide jumping off points and focus to the topic of consent in our modern world.”
The workshop material has recently been revised to include more bystander intervention information and more intersectionality acknowledgement.
To host a workshop, at least 75 per cent of each council’s members must participate.
Karan Saxena, the lead consent culture facilitator with Justice for Women Manitoba, said that teaching consent culture is about both learning the practice of consent and unlearning harmful societal structures.
“Consent culture is founded on egalitarian values, that aims at unlearning all the rape myths taught to people in general about sexual assault, harassment [and] violence under the guise of victim blaming and policing of marginalized bodies,”
Saxena said.
“It is a movement to combat oppressive ideologies by teaching
people about giving and receiving consent, their basic rights in the realm of sexual assault, resources available for survivors, how to be an active bystander to prevent sexual assault of any kind and how to effectively respond to disclosures.”
Justice for Women Manitoba, along with UMSU VP Advocacy Sarah Bonner-Proulx, are calling for similar workshops to be made mandatory for U of M faculty in the wake of recent cases of inappropriate behaviour by professors toward students.
A spokesperson for the U of M has said that the university "has indicated that it will continue to explore consent training options, including mandatory, with all relevant groups."
In mid-August, Winnipeg oncologist Gary Allan Joseph Harding was stripped of his medical licence for six months and fined after he was found guilty of professional misconduct. The doctor was teaching at the U of M at the time and made several inappropriate sexual advances toward students under his tutelage.
Last year, former U of M jazz
professor Steve Kirby was fired from his then-current position at Berklee College after students told the college he had sexually harassed them when he was teaching at the U of M. The U of M faced criticism for not disclosing their investigation of Kirby to Berklee College, which the university responded to by referencing provincial privacy laws that barred them from doing so.
With files from Qudus Abusaleh
Saudi medical trainees allowed to remain in Canada
Thousands of others still facing sudden exodus
MALAK ABAS, STAFF
In a recent development in the ongoing conflict between Canada and Saudi Arabia, Saudi medical trainees studying in Canada have been allowed to stay in the country.
Diplomatic conflict became public in early August after Minister of Foreign Affairs Chrystia Freeland critiqued Saudi Arabia’s treatment of women’s rights activist Samar Badawi on Twitter. A day later, Global Affairs Canada tweeted that Canada “is gravely concerned about additional arrests of civil society and women’s rights activists in #SaudiArabia, including Samar Badawi.”
and living expenses.
The sudden announcement affected over 8,000 Saudi students studying in Canada, including 48 at the U of M.
However, over 1,000 Saudi medical residents and fellows studying in Canada have been given an openended deadline to stay in Canada, according to an email sent out to students from the Saudi Ministry of Education. The email stresses this
students to leave Canada was Aug. 31, there has since been a three-week extension with the new deadline set at Sept. 22.
Some Saudi students in Canada are currently in the process of filing for asylum to stay in the country
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stood behind the sentiment, saying that Canada will “continue to stand up for Canadian values and human rights.”
Saudi Arabia’s response included pulling its students studying at Canadian post-secondary institutions, many of whom were here on the government-funded King Abdullah scholarship, which covered tuition, health insurance, language training
open stay is only until students can find an equivalent program in another country.
The U of M’s international centre received information that confirmed Saudi students studying as medical trainees in the U of M’s Postgraduate Medical Education program will be able to finish their studies in Canada.
Saudi students in other programs have been scrambling to plan their upcoming school term.
While the original deadline for
Some Saudi students in Canada are currently in the process of filing for asylum to stay in the country. At least 20 students are currently attempting to be granted asylum — a process that the government of Canada describes as being “for those with a well-founded fear of persecution, torture or death.” It is to be determined if the students have a case for claiming asylum.
The international centre has recommended Saudi students who have been studying at the university contact international student advisors for assistance with the process of transitioning their studies, transferring credits and practical help with moving back home.
On the U of M website, the international centre states it is “continuing to work with the government of Canada, and universities across the country, to ensure a co-ordinated response to this situation.”
PHOTO BY MEGAN COLWELL
PHOTO BY ASHA NELSON
UMSU advocates for Indigenous coursework, OER
MALAK ABAS, STAFF
UMSU’s annual budget submission to the Undergraduates of Canadian Research-Intensive Universities (UCRU) was completed Aug. 3. Much of the budget focused on converting student loans into federal grants for U of M students and increasing undergraduate research funding.
UCRU is a collective of eight Canadian undergraduate student unions from U15 universities that advocates for students and works with the Canadian government on student issues, including student loans.
UMSU president Jakob Sanderson also worked with four other UCRU members to write an advocacy document to “promote the affordability and flexibility of course materials in classrooms” by continuing the implementation of open educational resource initiatives.
Open educational resources, often referred to as OER, are learning resources such as textbooks that are made more accessible by being pub-
lished under an open license, allowing students to download textbooks at no cost.
Increasing Indigenous course content
At the July 19 UMSU meeting, Jack Theis and other members of the U of M Indigenous Students’ Association (UMISA) gave a presentation on the importance of increasing Indigenous course content at the university.
their priorities, as well as we’ve met with some administration officials,” Sanderson said at the meeting.
“And we continue to want to do that. What we would like to see is the central administration take a much stronger role in promoting
“What we would like to see is the central administration take a much stronger role in promoting Indigenous course content”
their course content, such as [the faculties of] music, social work and arts, while other faculties have not done so. So what we’ll try and do is talk to the central administration to come with a little bit stronger of an enforcing mechanism to ensure that all faculties across campus take seriously implementing Indigenous course content.”
— Jakob Sanderson, UMSU president
UMSU’s steps toward pressuring the administration to continue holding faculties accountable for providing Indigenous studies in their coursework were outlined at the Aug. 30 meeting.
“Since that time, we’ve met with representatives from UMISA, heard
Indigenous course content. To this point, it’s been noted as a strategic objective of the university, however, the actual implementation of Indigenous course content has been very much left up to individual faculties.
“So, from our conversations, some individual faculties have taken concrete steps towards indigenizing
Additional updates
The U of M board of governors held two emergency meetings over the last week.
Sanderson, however, said the content of those meetings were “closed and confidential” and therefore could not go into detail at the meeting.
Sanderson noted that as he and UMSU VP Advocacy Sarah BonnerProulx were “allowed” to provide further information, updates on the
situation would be provided.
As part of orientation activities, UMSU will be hosting a safe cannabis consumption workshop, to coordinate with their safe consumption on campus policies, on a to be determined day within orientation week, which runs from Sept. 10-14.
Over 100 people have already applied to be peer-to-peer tutors. To qualify as a possible tutor, students must have received an “A” or higher in the class they wish to tutor. Hired tutors may earn up to $15 an hour. Students are encouraged to apply at tutors@umsu.ca. UMSU plans to advertise to possible tutees once a sufficient number of tutors have been hired.
The app, which will connect tutors to tutees through an online database, is expected to go live in early September.
