The College Fix

This coming Monday, Columbia will announce a new requirement: Students will have until March 13 to complete a “sexual respect” education program.

Failure to do so could result in “diploma or registration holds.”

Students will have a choice of four options to fulfill the requirement, “including participating in an hour-long workshop, watching and discussing short films, and submitting anonymous reflection pieces on two separate TED talks.”

Pieces of art or poetry related to the topic can also be submitted.

The Columbia Daily Spectator reports:

The program — which will be officially announced on Monday as the University’s first community citizenship initiative — was announced by Dean of Undergraduate Student Life Cristen Kromm and graduate hall directors in meetings with the staff of each residential area over the past two weeks.

“[Administrators] want to be very effective by having people get something out of it, but they understand everyone is really busy,” one RA said.

While students may fulfill the requirement with any of these options, they will be encouraged to participate in a workshop, which will focus on one of a few topics such as healthy relationships and bystander intervention.

No Red Tape prevention coordinator Michela Weihl, BC ’17, said that while the program should offer choices to students, these options should not differ in how much work they require or how much information they convey.

“A lot of the options being offered are pretty visibly less effort, and when you offer students a choice … unless they’re deeply invested already, they’re going to choose what’s going to take them less time,” Weihl said.

There appears to be some confusion, however, as to the “mandatory nature” of the program. The Spectator notes that Dean Kromm had informed RAs last week that the program would not be required. But later, an RA met with the dean and informed her that “many RAs in the [first] meeting expressed concerns about enforcing student participation without requiring it.”

“The sentiment wasn’t that we, RAs, wanted to add it as a requirement,” the RA said. “We thought that students might not partake if there might not be follow up.”

RAs who had meetings this week said that they were informed the program was mandatory.

The College Fix reached out to Spectator writer Giulia Olsson and the paper’s editor for clarification; however, neither responded.

An RA offers up a money quote for the new program: “Someone who doesn’t understand what rape is and thinks this is bullshit would most likely not participate — and those are the people that need to be reached.”

One might think that someone who has the brains to gain entrance into an Ivy League school would know what rape is.

Then again, based on past and recent evidence, one wonders if even those in charge at our universities know its definition.

At any rate, Columbia sure had an interesting week.

Read the full article.

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