Columbia recently instituted a (mandatory) “sexual respect education” program in which students have several options to fulfill the requirement.
One of these options, “consider[ing] the topic of sexual respect through various artistic mediums,” has left some wondering about its “ability to teach students about sexual assault prevention.”
The Columbia Daily Spectator reports:
According to Executive Vice President for University Life Suzanne Goldberg, the arts option is meant to appeal to diverse learning styles while yielding material that can continue a conversation about sexual respect.
“Every student has a capacity to create a piece of art,” social work professor Rogério Pinto—who co-chairs a committee formed to design the arts option—said at a Columbia College Student Council meeting two weeks ago. “We can express a lot of thoughts and feelings by critically thinking about a particular subject and then creating a piece of art.”
Still, some students on a working group of students, faculty, and administrators that advised Goldberg on the program have expressed concern that making a video, writing a poem, or creating a painting are less effective ways to teach students about sexual respect than other workshops.
“There’s really no mechanism to say whether or not a student actually digested the material,” working group member Abby Porter, CC ’17, said. “It’s not that students at Columbia aren’t incredibly smart, it’s just that talking about this requires a dialogue.”
Well, it seems the “learning style” craze has reached beyond the realm of lower education.
Another member of that working group, Nick Wolferman, agrees with Ms. Porter on the “need for required dialogue”: “For our purposes, to self-impose a community standard revolving on self-respect—the workshops should have been the sole and primary means through which we did that.”
It isn’t enough, you see, that the school required this new program; you have to fulfill its mandate the “right” way!
Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on Twitter
Please join the conversation about our stories on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Reddit, MeWe, Rumble, Gab, Minds and Gettr.