Student leaders at Columbia are flummoxed at the degree of their peers’ eye-rolling regarding the college’s year-and-a-half-old “sexual respect” program.
Rolled out last February, the program immediately faced issues, not the least of which was its mandatory nature. For failure to complete it, students were to be penalized with holds on future registrations and even diplomas, but this was later relaxed to merely losing “good community standing.”
However — uh oh! — when the number of students actually fulfilling the requirement proved rather dismal a mere one week before the deadline, officials upped the penalty back to the original!
Students faced problems signing up for “sexual respect” workshops, campus staff didn’t show for them in some instances, and some of the program’s most ardent supporters complained that various workshop options weren’t “good enough.”
Now, Columbia is wondering how to get students more engaged in the program — to “buy in.” But school officials acknowledge that “without student support, the programming will fall flat.”
The Columbia Daily Spectator reports:
[Nick] Wolferman, the executive director of Residence Hall Leadership Organization, has asked the leaders of 50 clubs on campus, including the councils, to host sexual respect workshops for members of their organizations, including first-years who must fulfill the requirement. Doing so, he said, will establish sexual respect as a student standard and responsibility and reiterate what several studies have shown—that continuous consent education reduces risk of sexual assault on campus.
MORE: Hundreds protest Columbia’s ‘sexual respect’ program
“I think the conversations have been focused on what the responsibility of the administration is and their resources and what they are providing to prevent assault,” Wolferman said. “I think it is definitely warranted to look at how they’re addressing the problem, but in the end I think it’s the students who are accountable and responsible to eliminate the amount of times students are hurting other students on this campus.”
So far, a handful of clubs, including Engineering Student Council and Columbia Outdoor Orientation Program have affirmed that they will host sexual respect workshops. Leaders from other groups have yet to respond.
Yeah, but good luck with that. As it says a bit later in the article, “Students so far have shown little interest in the program, citing apathy and disinterest in the programs themselves.”
Columbia student and former orientation leader trainer Ashley Lee says, “I think most people just look at it like another thing that they have to do.”
Indeed! How dare college students merely desire to study the subjects for which they came to college in the first place, and not want to waste their time with poorly constructed PC nonsense which is based largely on faulty statistics!
MORE: Columbia’s ‘sexual respect’ requirement ignites frustration, mockery
MORE: Columbia students: How does an art piece teach ‘sexual respect?’
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