Voting is exciting for me. Odd, I know, but Iâve loved it ever since my mom took me into the voting booth in 1996, when Bill Clinton, Bob Dole and Ross Perot comprised the field for president. Granted, I probably shouldnât have been allowed in, but my mom was heavily pregnant with my sister and I was only three years old. Ever since that experience, I looked forward to voting.
I remember the first time I voted. I had just turned 18, and I voted in some judicial race. I didnât know the candidates (which Iâm ashamed to say) but I still voted because I had been looking forward to it for 15 years.
However, some people do not have the luxury to vote. Wait, what? I thought the right to vote was guaranteed by the United States Constitution! Well, you thought wrong. In recent years many states, including Ohio, have enforced voter identification laws. This means in order to register to vote or even vote, people need to show a valid form of identification.
For some people, thatâs not a big deal â there are driverâs licenses or state-issued IDs. For others, itâs quite hard to obtain those pieces of identification. They need to take off of work and go to the DMV and wait in line, sometimes for hours, in order to get it.
These laws target low-income, minority or elderly voters, who happen to vote Democratic. And as of October 13, there is some form of a voter identification law in 31 states.
I recently had a run-in with this law. I still vote in Wisconsin, and thereâs a pretty big election coming up. Being in Washington, D.C., this semester, I filed for an absentee ballot in the middle of August. However, I still havenât received it, even though one of my friends had.
I called my town hall and found out I couldnât get it until I sent in a copy of my identification. Embarrassingly enough, I didnât know Wisconsin had a voter ID law. I was shocked and furious. Luckily, the woman was nice enough to tell me I could just email a picture of my ID and then my ballot would be on its way.
I hung up, and then called my friend to vent about this unfair law and how I almost wasnât able to vote. Then, just my luck, Wisconsinâs voter ID law was struck down they next day. I was very happy, to say the least, but I couldnât help but think â what if I didnât call my town hall and the law wasnât struck down? I wouldnât have been able to vote in this election, which will shape Wisconsinâs future.
The point is this: in the United States, everyone is guaranteed the right to vote. But some states are trying to make it harder for certain groups of people to vote. What kind of democracy does that make us?
Halloween is a special time. I celebrate it through some of the older practices of the holidayâfor me, itâs less about candy, and more about remembering my beloved dead, those relatives and friends who have passed. Itâs a chance for me to thank them and tell stories about them and laugh and cry a little because I miss them. Itâs a time to remember that love crosses the boundary between life and death.
But, of course, most people associate the holiday with trick-or-treating, parties, costumes. I love this aspect, too, and have fond memories of celebrating in the Castro district in San Francisco, and of taking my son out for trick-or-treating when he was younger.
I also become anxious, this time of year, about people dressing up as American Indians. This year it seems especially problematic as more people realize that sports teams should not be using Native mascots.
I feel less and less tolerant, these days, of seeing people wearing fake headdresses. A couple years ago in November, I caught something in the news that rendered me speechless. Actually, truthfully speaking, it made me sick to my stomach. The incident? A Victoriaâs Secret fashion show (which apparently was also a television special). At the end of the show, a model dressed in bra and panties meant to simulate turquoise-studded animal skins walked down the runway in fringed buckskin high heels, behind her a slide proclaiming something along the lines of âHappy Thanksgiving.â She was also wearing an enormous headdress, so long it dragged on the ground.
There were many things wrong with this pictureâthe mixed-up use of visual signifiers of tribes from different regions who are very different from each other; the fact that the model looked like she was starving; the fact that the image sexualized Native women when Native women are the victims of sexual violence, usually perpetrated by non-Native men; the fact that Thanksgiving was being used to market faux Indian underwear costumes. But the thing that upset me the most was that headdress. Because I know what itâs supposed to mean when someone wears a headdress.
Thanks to OWUâs support, I have done research on the Rosebud Reservation, home of the Sicangu Lakota nation, and Iâve accompanied many spring break mission week teams to the reservation. In those experiences, I have met men who earned the right to wear a headdress.
Every feather in a war bonnet is there for a reason; it has nothing to do with decoration. A man has to have a history, a lifetime, of doing important and brave things for his people in order to put on that piece of regalia. And itâs not just about battle, about taking up arms against an enemy. Itâs also about standing up for whatâs right, about sacrificing for the good of the community, about being generous. When a man wears a headdress, it signals that he is a great leader, but also serves as a reminder to the wearer that he is responsible for taking care of his community.
I associate the Lakota headdress in particular with Albert White Hat, Sr., who was a great chief of the Sicangu Lakota, and who met many times with OWU students serving on service trips to South Dakota. He was one of a handful of people who established Sinte Gleska University, a tribal college, back in the 1970s. He worked very hard to bring back his Lakota language, which he had been beaten and ridiculed for speaking at school. He and a handful of others were responsible for bringing back Lakota ceremonies after they were no longer illegal, starting in 1978. (Thatâs not a typo; American Indian ceremonies were illegal until 1978.)
Chief White Hat did all of this at great personal risk, and with great personal sacrifice. He worked, his entire lifetime, to bring his people back to pursuing a way of life informed by Lakota philosophy and values, among them: personal responsibility, service to the community, and respect for self and others. He made life better for people on the Rosebud Reservation, and he shared his work with my students and me when we came to South Dakota.
This year at Halloween I will be remembering Albert. He died in June of 2013; it seems more recent than that. I still have trouble believing heâs gone. When I speak to my beloved dead, I will thank him, and maybe share a joke with him. (He loved telling jokes.)
If, as the mascot proponents claim, we wish to honor Native Americans, I propose some alternative ideas to dressing up in costumes. It comes down to thinking about our relationships, to asking questions like these: What is my relationship to Native peopleâor, better yet, to a particular Native person or group? How do I see them and think about them? What are my responsibilities to Native communities?
A better way to honor Native people, especially at an institution of higher learning, would be to read works written by Native people about their lives and concerns, their joys and gifts. (I have a list of favorite authors as long as my arm, but some of them include Susan Power, Winona LaDuke, LeAnne Howe, Scott Momaday, Sherman Alexie, Taiaiake Alfred, Louise Erdrich, Heid Erdrich, Linda Hogan, Phil Deloria, Joy Harjo, James Welch, Gordon Henry, Eric Gansworth, Jodi Byrd, Penelope KelseyâŚ) Great work is being done on the Native Appropriations blog, and the American Indians in Childrenâs Literature blog. Look for videos by the 1491s, if youâre in the mood for comedy. And if you like hip-hop, look for Frank Walnâs work on SoundCloud or YouTube.
Thereâs a whole world of enlightening and enjoyable work being done by Native people. Thereâs honor in engaging with that work and learning from it, opening up to what itâs teaching. Thereâs no honor in donning a fake headdress.
Karen Poremski is an associate professor of English at Ohio Wesleyan teaching Native American literature, women’s literature, early American literature and composition.
The soapbox is the proverbial platform for speaking oneâs mind unashamedly, contributing to public discourse without reservation or hesitation. These days, the soapbox is a sort of relic of the past. A person who is said to be standing on a soapbox is cast as a ranter, someone who makes a lot of noise without a lot of substance.
Weâre asking why that has to be. My fellow editors and I highly value those in our campus community who are unafraid and unashamed to say whatâs on their mind. As journalists, we believe if no one says anything when there is a problem, or when something crucial is going unsaid, nothing will change. Thatâs why we love receiving letters to the editor. They give us a different perspective and raise points we would not have otherwise thought of.
We found the letters we get, though, are longer than those typically published in newspapers. People who feel moved to respond to something in The Transcriptâs pages have more to say than a couple hundred words can contain. Those who write to us, faculty and students alike, arenât afraid to stand on the proverbial soapbox.
Now weâre bringing you a Soapbox of our own, and claiming it as a great place to be.
Soapbox takes the Opinion page and letters to the editor up a notch. Here youâll find longer, essay-type op-ed pieces by Ohio Wesleyanâs most passionate people. They issues about which they write touch our campus, our city, our state, our nation, our world. The authors and their writing take big issues head on, putting their thoughts and feelings into the context of our community. And our Soaboxâs digital platform brings that relic of the past into the 21st century, allowing everyone to engage with the pieces on social media and on our website.
The Soapbox is here, and itâs ready for anyone to stand on it. If you want to contribute to Soapbox, simply email an article on a topic of your choice between 600 and 900 words to owunews@owu.edu and one of our editors will respond.
Welcome to Soapbox. We hope you’re as excited as we are.
Something happened Tuesday that hadnât happened to me before â Rock Jones made an appointment with me.
Well, not with me personally, but with Ohio Wesleyanâs Small Living Unit community. Jones, Student Affairs vice president Craig Ullom and Residential Life director Wendy Piper hosted an open forum to talk with SLU residents about the Student Housing Master Plan and how it will affect our homes.
He didnât have a lot of new information for us, other than that the university has raised enough money so far to build two new SLUs (about $1.5 million). A lot is still up in the air, including what the houses themselves will look like and how many each will hold.
But what felt significant for me about Tuesdayâs forum was the fact that it was an arena for students to talk directly to key decision-making administrators created by those administrators.
What I was expecting to be a fancy slideshow with some time for questions at the end turned out to be a dialogue between SLU residents and the president about what SLUs mean to us, to the university and what we want for the future. There was even a consensus that SLUs are inimitable communities that enrich their members and the campus community as a whole.
This seems rare for OWU. In my time here Iâve found administrators are happy to engage in dialogue with students, but it is usually the students who must initiate that dialogue for it to happen. When administrators make an appointment with us, it usually involves a fancy slideshow.
Iâve seen a bit change in that this year. Nancy Bihl Rutkowski, assistant director for Student Involvement, initiated a conversation between us about OWUâs over-involvement problem, and now weâre working on creating a focus group about last springâs engagement survey. And while their answer was nothing close to what we wanted, the Board of Trustees at least acknowledged The Transcriptâs demands for greater transparency.
Tuesdayâs forum signified to me that OWUâs administrators are getting the message â when students are stakeholders in big university decisions, we want to be part of the conversation.
Will the Student Housing Master Plan be ideal for the SLUs? Almost certainly not. As a SLU resident and ResLife employee I know houses have been so neglected over the years that some are now borderline uninhabitable. And the universityâs fundraising efforts apparently have some limitations that mean we wonât get houses comparable to what we have now. A lot of this is out of current administratorsâ control, but it is still regrettable and frustrating for SLU residents past and present.
The fact that I will one day come back to visit the House of Peace and Justice, my home at OWU, and will have to go somewhere thatâs not the Perkins House makes me sad. Iâm sure all the other soon-to-be SLU alumni feel similarly about their own houses.
But I am glad the channels of communication between the SLU community and the administration are open so that the SLUsâ new homes will be the best they can possibly be for their future residents â and for the alumni who will inevitably come crash on the couch.
Professor proposes solutions to low enrollment, financial high water
By Professor Tom Wolber Guest Columnist
On Census Day 2014, Ohio Wesleyan had 484 new students. The total enrollment for the fall semester was thus 1,734 students. That is a decline of 6.1 percent from the 1,829 who were enrolled at OWU on Census Day in the fall of 2013. Where do we go from here? Quo vadis, OWU?
Thesis
The discussion has barely started, but it is already clear that different people are drawing different conclusions from the unfortunate situation. In the first camp are primarily those to whom the financial health and well-being of the institution is entrusted. They are looking at the numbers and seem to have already concluded that it is belt-tightening time. To correct the imbalance of a 6.1 percent reduction in student size this year there should be a corresponding reduction of the faculty size next year.
A hiring freeze is already in place. If the current contraction trend continues beyond 2014-15, we could see courses, majors, faculty, and perhaps even entire programs, departments, and services either consolidated or dropped from the curriculum altogether. There are exigency policies in place that permit such contingencies, including the termination of tenured faculty members.
The ultimate authority for program and position reductions and terminations rests with the Board of Trustees. They have used the nuclear option in the past when OWUâs Department of Nursing or when tenure-track positions were eliminated in the 1980s and 1990s, respectively. In the eyes of some, the need of a balanced budget trumps all other concerns. In their minds, the question of cost-effectiveness and the resulting downsizing at a time when the demand for the companyâs product is low is a sound and wise business decision.
There are, however, many problems with the implementation of draconian austerity measures. For one thing, to mindlessly subtract staff and faculty in a time of crisis can compromise the mission and quality of the institution. Also, austerity does not necessarily lead to growth and recovery. âYou cannot cut your way to prosperity,â Ohioâs governor John Kasich stated in 2012. In addition, the decimation of personnel not only has devastating effects on employee morale but also on the reputation of an institution. A reduction in choices does not make OWU more attractive to prospective students and their parents.
Antithesis
In the other camp are those who advocate for revenue enhancement and a pro-growth agenda. At the first faculty meeting of the year, OWUâs new Vice President for Enrollment, Susan Dileno, spelled out several specific measures she launched to improve the admission situation. It seems premature to downsize the institution before she had a chance to test and implement all her ideas.
There are things OWU could and should be doing to turn the ship around: Letâs involve the faculty and the alumni, letâs make the curriculum more relevant and attractive, letâs consider three-year degree options, letâs create new majors and programs, letâs look at graduate-level degrees, letâs increase fundraising, letâs double the endowment, letâs explore on-line education and new markets, letâs create partnerships with community colleges, and letâs network and share resources with our GLCA sister institutions.
There is nothing inherently wrong with any of these suggestions. A good offense is the best defense, they say. The problem is that OWU has tried many of these ideas in the past, with mixed success. The truth is that institutions of higher learning, and especially liberal arts colleges, are facing a real crisis for which no silver bullet exists. Declining numbers of high-school graduates in the Midwest have something to do with it. At the same time, the economic recovery has yet to reach middle-class families; they continue to struggle economically.
Then there is the conservative push toward more practical, utilitarian, and vocational skills at the expense of a liberal-arts education. Suffice it to say that OWU is not the only college in Ohio and the Midwest that is facing challenges such as a declining student body and thus a budget shortage. Given these economic, demographic, and political realities, it will be tough to improve the situation. The future cannot be based on âhopiumâ alone. A sober assessment may eventually come to the conclusion that ârightsizingâ the institution is indeed the best way to go. But at this specific point in time it is too early to make the definitive determination that a financially contingent situation exists.
Synthesis
Both âshrinkersâ and âgrowersâ have a point, but neither camp has all the answers. What is needed instead is a balanced approach combining expenditure reductions and revenue enhancements. This is what Ohio Wesleyan did in 1995 when it faced a similar situation under President Tom Courtice. There is no doubt that the budget imbalance that OWU is currently facing must be corrected, but there are several constructive ways to do so.
The president and the Board of Trustees indeed have a fiduciary obligation to keep OWU financially afloat. If they ignored budget considerations, they would be derelict in their duties. But the budget is only part of their mission.
There are also the conflicting goals of protecting the institutionâs academic quality and heritage. Ignoring these equally important considerations would likewise constitute a serious breach of their responsibility. The trick is to find the right combination of mission, cost-effectiveness, and quality. Therefore, all options should be pursued aggressively, including the path of retrenchment and the path of growth. It is too early to commit to one particular strategy without having explored the full range of all available options first.
Should the institution eventually conclude that ârightsizingâ the institution is indeed the way to go, it should follow the rules and regulations outlined in the âFaculty Handbook.â
It is imperative that the consultations are as wide as possible and the decision-making shared.
Standing faculty committees must be involved; hearings should take place as part of the deliberations; affected program and department chairs should be permitted to play an active role; and students should have a strong voice.
There are ways to handle exigency situations in a fair and transparent, rational and humane way. Perhaps natural attrition, early retirements, and buyouts can ease the pain. Laying off faculty and staff should be a measure of last resort and used only when all other efforts have failed.
I miss Ohio Wesleyan. There, I admitted it. Iâm doing a semester in Washington, D.C., for the Wesleyan in Washington program, and I didnât expect to feel this way so soon.
I love my school, donât get me wrong, but I was feeling like I needed to get off campus for a bit. I guess itâs the junior year itch.
Photo: Wikimedia
But when I check my email and see the OWU Daily, my heart races.
I need to know whatâs going on on campus. I ask my boyfriend and my friends on campus for gossip, or just whatâs going on. They always report back with, âThereâs nothing interesting going on.â
Well, maybe not to you, but to me, even if thereâs a duck in the fountain at lunch, thatâs exciting to me.
Itâs a weird feeling going from student to adult in a short time span. I now understand how graduates must feel. Every day I need to make my all of meals, clean and just be an adult. I canât run to Thomson and buy food with Monopoly money; I actually spend real money on food!
I now understand the hassle of a commute, especially when your trains are majorly delayed. I also know the feeling of FOMO (fear of missing out) by seeing Facebook pictures or events of goings-on at OWU. When people send me pictures of whatâs going on at OWU, I just reply with pictures of taxidermied lions at the Smithsonian.
Itâs weird not being with my newspaper family, with whom I spend most of my time. Itâs weird not seeing the familiar faces down the JAYwalk and seeing Linda at University Hall for my iced mocha with extra chocolate. I donât even know who the freshmen are. Iâll arrive back in January completely clueless, like a lost puppy who just wants some guidance and a treat.
Even though I miss being on campus, I would not trade this experience for the world. Itâs a once in a lifetime experience, and I love every moment of it. I love D.C., I love my job and I just like pretending to be an adult. D.C. is an amazing place to be, and I have everything at my disposal. But thereâs nothing like OWU.
Come January, my life as an adult ends, and my life as a student resumes. I already know as Iâm walking to classes in -40 degrees Farenheit, Iâll wish I were in D.C. But you canât have it both ways, and Iâm just realizing it now.
Activists march in New York City’s SlutWalk in October 2011.
Trigger Warning: Rape and sexual violence
Thereâs something profound and poetic about people of marginalized genders boldly claiming a place that has perpetrated violence against them. Some go wearing less clothing than usual; some wear what they usually wear; all shout in resistance, combatting a culture that condones rape and blames survivors of it for the wrong done to them. They fearlessly enter a space controlled by men that can be threatening and dangerous. It is their space, too.
This happens at Ohio Wesleyan every year. The people are the marchers in SlutWalk, the march protesting victim-blaming and using womenâs clothing as a justification for violence against them. The space is Fraternity Hill, the home of six university fraternity houses and the site of many weekend parties.
SlutWalk demands relfection upon on fraternitiesâ past and present perpetration and normalization of sexual violence. A few examples Jessica Valenti cites in a recent piece for The Guardian: the Georgia Tech University Phi Kappa Tau guide to âLuring Your Rapebait,â Wesleyan Universityâs (Connecticut) Beta Theta Pi chapterâs reputation as a ârape factory,â and some Yale Delta Kappa Epsilon members shouting âNo means yes, yes means anal!â as they marched around the campus for an initiation ritual.
These are just recent examples, and these problems arenât just out in the world. Theyâre in our midst at OWU, too. Women have told me theyâve felt unsafe in some fraternity houses because of them. Fraternity men here are not removed from the sexually aggressive alpha-male stereotype that the broader culture has earned them â as Valenti notes, men in fraternities are three times more likely to commit rape.
SlutWalk, then, challenges us â it challenges all men, but in the context of our university, it particularly challenges fraternity men. It demands a swift end to the fraternity culture of sexual domination and coercion. It confronts us with the fact that the behavior and language it was conceived to combat sometimes looks and sounds a lot like the inside of a fraternity house. It demands that those houses, the social spaces over which we have control, be safe for everyone.
This is not an attack, but a call to my fellow Greek men to understand our responsibility to right the wrongs our community has done. Iâm proud to be a in an organization with men who make a conscious effort to create safe and inclusive environments, and to know men in other fraternities whom the women in my life trust.
But that does not diminish the size of the problem. What can we do? There are so many things we can do. But to start, we can march in SlutWalk.
During Take Back the Night, fraternity members stand outside their houses in solidarity. Tonight, we can get off our porches and into the march. We can join the reclaiming of our space as one where everyone can feel safe and welcome. In March we can do the same during Take Back the Night. And we can refute the culture of violence with our words and actions at every point in between.
Honor, truth, personal integrity, morality, virtue, justiceâall fraternities have values on which they were founded and by which its members are supposed to live.
This culture of violence that has come to define us is contrary to all of them. Itâs time for fraternity men to start proving that our stated values are more than empty words. We can make that start tonight.
Noah Manskar is historian of Sisters United, the sponsoring organization for SlutWalk, and a member of Alpha Sigma Phi.
Editor’s Note: The full editorial staff for The Transcript endorses Manskarâs stance on a need for transparency from the Board of Trustees and Administration.
Going to college is fraught with questions.
One sends many of us hereâwhat do we want to do with our lives? Many others arise as we navigate being in a new place with new people. Some have answers. Some donât. Some answers are kept from us.
Lifeâs ambiguity and each personâs unique circumstances grow our list of questions. But so does the apparent nature of private educational institutions.
Renovations start, end and start again. Tuition rises. Retention falls. Enrollment goals arenât met. We the students, Ohio Wesleyanâs primary stakeholders, may get an explanatory email weeks or months later. Sometimes we arenât told at all.
Weâre left asking why, or why not, or how, or at whose expense, or at whose benefit, or all of the above. The institution charged with imparting knowledge to us leaves us with a dearth of knowledge about itself and its operations.
This time next week, the Board of Trustees will be here to address many questions, including what to do about this yearâs low enrollment and how to move forward with the Student Housing Master Plan. But we students, Ohio Wesleyanâs primary stakeholders, wonât be privy to any of the answers. Every event on the agenda is closed except for the final full body meeting â Oct. 3 at 1:30 p.m. in the Bayley Room.
I think itâs time to ask why. If there is nothing to hide, why doesnât the Board of Trustees give students access to their discussions and decisions when so many of them directly affect us?
If these huge institutionsâ trustees who have so many more people and resources to manage meet and talk publicly, why donât Ohio Wesleyanâs?
Just as taxpayers fund Ohio State, students fund OWU. We certainly arenât the only revenue source, but our tuition accounts for about 60 percent of it, according to the universityâs most recent public tax documents. But when the Board of Trustees meets on campus, most students probably donât even know theyâre here, let alone that theyâre going to talk about how to spend our tuition. To me, this is akin to the Delaware city council, or even the United States Congress, locking its chamber doors to govern out of citizensâ sight.
The Transcript will only have access to this yearâs aforementioned full body meeting. We want more, and we think you deserve more.
We want to hear President Rock Jonesâ address to the Board next Thursday afternoon. We want to be there when key committees take on the aforementioned issues Friday morning. And we want students who care about the university and their tuition dollars to be able to go, tooânot just to these meetings, but to any the trustees hold on campus.
I know administrators and trustees arenât keeping these meetings closed out of contempt. Perhaps they have good reasons; perhaps they just havenât thought about it. But they have incentives to open them.
First, and probably most obvious, opening meetings would allow decision-makers to interact directly with students and gain a perspective they wouldnât otherwise have. The three Board spots for recent alumni and the public monthly faculty meetings offer this to an extent; but most trustees donât get to talk with students regularly, if at all. Doing so would give them knowledge about what itâs really like to be an Ohio Wesleyan student, and I think that would lead to better decisions.
Second, OWU would be the first in the Ohio Five to make such a commitment to transparency. Being the âopposite of ordinaryâ is foundational to the universityâs ethos, and this gives administrators an opportunity to put theory into practice. The legal imperative may not be present, but the moral and mission-based imperative is.
Open meetings would answer many confusing and frustrating questions students have, or at least illuminate why theyâre confusing and frustrating. Itâs a mutually beneficial step our schoolâs leaders should take. Itâs time to open the doors. Itâs time to let us in.
How to Dress Well lead vocalist Tom Krell. Photo: Wikimedia
By Emma Nuiry Guest Writer
I recently had the privilege of attending a concert by âHow To Dress Wellâ at the A & R music bar in Columbus.
The lofi electronic band is the product of the singer/songwriter Tom Krell, whose raw falsetto vocals give his music a distinct R&B sound.
Krell released his third album entitled âWhat Is This Heart?â last June and received critical acclaim from the popular Internet music publication, Pitchfork.
The concert itself was incredibly personal as Krell shared stories of his pet cow Doug, his hopes of having a child someday and serenaded the small crowd with a lullaby sung a cappella.
It was evident all of the songs were deeply special to Krell as he beat his chest with the music and screamed into the microphone.
The crowd consisted of mostly twenty-year-old men, which is perhaps why the greatest moment of night came when Krell immediately called out an audience member after a transphobic comment was made. This exquisite display of social activism coming from a relatively popular musician was a moment I will never forget.
Although I sadly didnât learn any fashion tips, the concert was one of the most intimate experiences I have ever witnessed.
Sophomore Emma Nuiry is a member of the House of Peace and Justice and PRIDE.
The California state legislature passed a bill mandating an affirmative consent standard for universities receiving state funds last week. Photo: Wikimedia
By Spenser Hickey and Noah Manskar Managing Editor and Online Editor
As colleges around the nation and the federal government work to address the epidemic of sexual violence on campuses, the California state legislature recently took a revolutionary step with the passage of affirmative consent legislation, currently awaiting the governorâs signature.
The bill would require colleges that receive state funds to strengthen their policies, pushing students to seek and receive active consent in sexual activity, rather than the current system where not receiving ânoâ is the general threshold.
While this action has received some criticism, it is one we support. At the start of the year, we both participated in the universityâs main orientation program on sexual violence, organized through the theatre and dance department. In discussions after the dramatic performance, we emphasized that affirmative consent is the baseline standard. Those talks were a good step in addressing sexual violence for the incoming freshmen, but more concentrated efforts are needed to promote it here on campus to all students.
Putting the emphasis on seeking a yes, rather than whether ânoâ was said, returns the culpability regarding sexual violence where it belongs â with the perpetrator, not the person who experienced it. It also creates communication on sexual activity between those involved, which is beneficial for everyone.
Thereâs not much of an argument against it. The challenge comes from how dramatic a shift it is how we view sexual activity, especially in the traditionally heteronormative context of male-female dynamics, with men doing whatever they want until or after women say no.
This view isnât very healthy, and itâs certainly not equal. It strengthens the position of perpetrators, as sexual violence cases often come down to who said what â did she (statistically far more likely) say no? Thatâs not what the question should be, and affirmative consent can change that.
As weâve seen recently â Cee Lo Green and now Rush Limbaugh being the most recent celebrity offender â thereâs a lot of confusion about what constitutes sexual assault, and affirmative consent education and requirements can change that as well.
In addition to mandating this practice, the California law also requires on-campus advocacy for services; amnesty for survivors and witnesses who come forward and acknowledge theyâd drank while under 21; and training for campus disciplinary committees in how to handle sexual assault cases specifically.
These steps are critical in the fight against college sexual assault, and they are ones we think the University and student government should work to implement here on campus. A policy defining consent affirmatively codifies the ethical standard that human beings seeking to treat each other with dignity and respect should follow.
Affirmative consent policy began at Antioch University here in Ohio, While state and federal figures can order colleges to take steps, university administrators should take the initiative on programs like this â especially given how crucial it is for college students to understand the importance of affirmative consent.
