The College Fix

As promised, Columbia unveiled its new “sexual respect” program today via emails sent out by various college deans.

Students will have approximately one month to complete the program through various options, and failure to do so can result in holds in future registrations or even one’s diploma.

The Columbia Daily Spectator reports:

“The essence of this initiative is to reinforce that community citizenship is a critical part of being a Columbia student at any school, and that sexual respect is integral to what it means to be a member of this community,” Executive Vice President for University Life Suzanne Goldberg, who spearheaded the program’s development, told Spectator in an interview.

One option includes a series of hour-long workshops facilitated by Sexual Violence Response that will each focus on one theme, such as intimate partner violence, healthy relationships, or support for survivors of sexual assault.

“Students are at different levels of interest, experience, and engagement with these issues already,” Goldberg said. “The initiative offers a variety of participation options to, in effect, meet students where they are.”

In addition, a “media initiative” will provide students with prompts and questions in order to consider the topic of sexual respect through various artistic mediums.

According to Goldberg, this choice will allow students to engage with sexual respect issues in a creative way, enable further conversation by discussing the resulting artwork, and create material that can be used in future prevention programming.

Projects must “represent a good-faith effort to address the topic,” may not be sexually explicit, and may not comment on specific individuals without their consent, Goldberg said. Student participants will also be required to submit a statement alongside their works.

Before creating their own projects, students will be required to view three artistic representations listed on CourseWorks, including “A Needed Response,” a video made by two University of Oregon students in response to the Steubenville rape sentencing.

The program was constructed by a group “comprised of students, faculty, and administrators from across the University, including members of the Coalition Against Sexual Violence and No Red Tape.”

There’s no word if there will be any workshops about false (rape) accusations, basic due process rights, and/or comprehensive reviews of the Duke lacrosse case and the recent University of Virginia imbroglio.

Interestingly, the Columbia-affiliated Barnard College, an all-female institution, has opted not to participate in the program. Two of its deans said they needed “more information about the requirement’s content and implementation before making it mandatory …”

Read the full Spectator story.

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