STUDENT LED TASK FORCE ON INTERSECTIONAL ISSUES OF SEXUAL ASSAULT Arts and Science Federation of Associations Presented at the ASFA Annual General Meeting of May 12, 2016
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MOTIONS Motion 1: Adoption of the Student Led Task Force on Intersectional Issues of Sexual Assault
Whereas an executive member of the ASFA experienced a sexist and racially discriminatory environment; Whereas the University administration and the Association both failed in providing support and a resolution to the person in question; Whereas the University’s working group to create a new sexual assault policy lacked student voices and diversity; Whereas rape culture is a mass problem at all University campuses and not just Concordia; Whereas the ASFA has a legal and moral obligation to create a Task Force on sexual assault that deals with intersectional issues such as racism; Be it resolved that the ASFA adopt and uphold the following mandate of the Student Led Task Force on Intersectional Issues of Sexual Assault: The Task Force will address the issues raised by this complaint including, but not limited to, (i) violence and discrimination against women and minorities within student associations and other university bodies, and (ii) the inability of the existing means to ensure that complaints related to these issues are processed thoroughly and expediently in future cases. The Task Force will determine concrete ways to combat and prevent racism, sexism, and sexual violence at every level of the university life; foster a culture on campus that encourages respectful behaviour, develop and implement measures to ensure that members of the ASFA and Concordia communities, and women in particular, can learn, work, and be involved in campus life free of civil rights violations and violence in all its forms. In order to better achieve these goals the Task Force will: 1) Promote an intersectional understanding of sexual assault at Concordia included but not limited to racism, ableism, transphobia, classism, and homophobia. 2) Re-evaluate the University’s sexual assault policy and make further recommendations upon it’s one year review that reflect these intersectional values; 3) Inform and consult a diversity of students and their associations to get their input on the Sexual Assault Policy; 4) Work with the student associations, clubs, and equivalents under other umbrella student associations, to implement sexual assault policies in their organizations that will fit their structure and needs; 5) Promote campaigns related to the Task Force mandate other than the policy, such as consent campaigns, to help foster a respectful culture on campus at the student level; 6) The Task Force may also share proposals or recommendations to other University bodies that are facing the same issues in their student associations and clubs.
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Motion 2: ISAT Budgetary Allocation
 Whereas the ASFA has a legal and moral obligation to create the Task Force;
 Whereas it must incur many expenses to ensure that it functions to the best of its capabilities; Be it resolved that the ASFA fund the Student Led Task Force on Intersectional Issues of Sexual Assault for a span of five years; Be it further resolved that a new budget line be created for the Task Force allocating a minimum amount of $4,000.
Motion 3: Creation of an Advocacy Coordinator Whereas the ASFA has a mandate to create mandatory consent and power dynamic trainings for all Member Associations and their executives; Whereas the ASFA has a legal and moral obligation to create the Task Force and in order to properly fulfill these obligations it requires a chair who can allocate a lot of their time into the committee; Whereas there are many complaints about unsafe spaces between councillors and executive and there is no one to validate these anonymous complaints;
Be it resolved that the ASFA create an Advocacy Coordinator position with the following mandate; 1) Organize the ASFA power dynamic trainings during May and September, and January. 2) Chair the Task Force and uphold the mandate of the Task Force on behalf of the ASFA; 3) Work 21 hours a week, 2 of which shall be office hours in an accessible space and must be available at Loyola; 4) Must attend to the ASFA advocacy meetings; 5) Be the liaison between the ASFA executives and councillors when minor complaints arise and help direct students to the proper resources should serious complaints arise; 6) Report to the ASFA council of representatives twice a year and provide an update at the ASFA AGM.
Be it further resolved that the hiring committee be composed of the Prsident, VP Finance, VP Internal, a member from the Center for Gender Advocacy, the SARC, and two students involved in the creation of the Task Force. And that the hiring committee give priority to members of the Concordia community and uphold equal hiring practices. Be it further resolved that the ASFA allocate $18,300 toward their yearly salary.
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INTRODUCTION During the 2013-2014 academic year one of the ASFA executives known as Mei Ling experienced a sexist and racially discriminatory environment which was perpetrated by two male executive members one of which was the President of the Association. She was ignored and denied support from both the Association and the University when she sought out help and resolution. Mei Ling turned to CRARR and pursued legal actions against ASFA and the perpetrators involved. In addition during this academic year a previous person of the ASFA had two sexual assault allegations made against them, many survivors of sexual assault came forward about their experiences, and rape culture continued to be perpetrated around campus. Settlement and Legal Obligations ASFA went to mediation where the Association settled on a monetary amount, issued a public apology and made a commitment to create a student lead task force to deal with issues of sexual assault that were not addressed in the University’s policy mainly the intersectional issues that arise in these cases. The current working group at Concordia has a lack of student representation, lack of diversity, and does not take a human rights perceptive to the issues at hand. International students and women of minority ethnicities may have very different experiences with sexual assault and the way their cases are dealt with. The Student Task Force will address the issues raised by this complaint including, but not limited to, (i) violence and discrimination against women and minorities within student associations and other university bodies, and (ii) the inability of the existing means to ensure that complaints related to these issues are processed thoroughly and expediently in future cases. The Task Force will determine concrete ways to combat and prevent racism, sexism, and sexual violence at every level of the university life; foster a culture on campus that encourages respectful behaviour, develop and implement measures to ensure that members of the ASFA and Concordia communities, and women in particular, can learn, work, and be involved in campus life free of civil rights violations and violence in all its forms. Moral Obligations Regardless of the legal obligations, issues of sexual harassment remain prominent at University campuses and the ASFA has been made privy to many more situations other than
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that of Mei Ling. It is time that a Student Task Force be created so the survivors of the issues, mainly students, can have a say in the ways in which we deal with these situations and the mechanisms in place for support.
MEETINGS AND MANDATE OF THE TASK FORCE First ASFA approached the university’s group about adding more students and community members to their task force. However, this idea was not well received. ASFA then had a meeting with the President (Jenna), VP Internal (Mariah Gillis), and CRARR where the VP Internal came up with the idea of doing an inter university task force. Christmas break approached and then ASFA had to deal with half the executive resigning, other cases of sexual violence students brought forth, and the restructuring that was time sensitive because of the referendum and election dates. They were only recently able to put the task force back to the forefront. In March there was a meeting with members of ASFA and members from the Concordia community who have experience dealing with these issues to help form the mandate of the Taks Force. The idea of an inter-university Task Force was not well received. It is too large of a mandate and university’s have different policies and structures. Therefore, we would like it to stay a group within Concordia because we need to address the systematic problems within the student associations along with critiquing the university policies. The question then became how would this be extended to student associations? Since it’s a task force on sexual violence and racism, it would be important to reach individuals that do not identify as white and to also explore intersectionality with gender identity, race, sexual violence, and ability. We have to review the policy and the way it is being implemented after it gets out since no draft copies were made available to the students for input, we know that the university is going to review the policy in a year so we felt it would be best if we focused on recommendations for its revision. We also talked about helping the student associations adopt it and fill in the blanks to fit their structure.After that the review process would be every 5 years so we do not know what that would look like. Our main goal is to address systemic problems within our student associations and clubs. At this meeting we also discussed a public forum visioning: If this is a student task force then all students should decide what that looks like and how we address these issues. We issued an open call-out to all students with targeted invitations for further outreach. We had two sessions one in mid April and one in mid-May so students who were in exams had options to attend. The visionings were facilitated by the Center for Gender Advocacy. Much of what was said in the March meeting was echoed in the visioning. The name was changed from the Student Led Task Force on Sexual Assault and Racism to The Student Led Task Force on Intersectional Issues of Sexual Assault. This title encompasses all the intersecting “isms” and “phobias” that often accompany cases of sexual assault. Another major change was the decision to not
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promote the existing University policy and to remove the idea of helping the student associations implement that specific policy. We did not want to support something that was not good to begin with because it will give survivors a false sense of support. In the end this was the final mandate: The Task Force will address the issues raised by this complaint including, but not limited to, (i) violence and discrimination against women and minorities within student associations and other university bodies, and (ii) the inability of the existing means to ensure that complaints related to these issues are processed thoroughly and expediently in future cases. The Task Force will determine concrete ways to combat and prevent racism, sexism, and sexual violence at every level of the university life; foster a culture on campus that encourages respectful behaviour, develop and implement measures to ensure that members of the ASFA and Concordia communities, and women in particular, can learn, work, and be involved in campus life free of civil rights violations and violence in all its forms. In order to better achieve these goals the Task Force will: 1) Promote an intersectional understanding of sexual assault at Concordia included but not limited to racism, ableism, transphobia, classism, and homophobia. 2) Re-evaluate the University’s sexual assault policy and make further recommendations upon it’s one year review that reflect these intersectional values; 3) Inform and consult a diversity of students and their associations to get their input on the Sexual Assault Policy; 4) Work with the student associations, clubs, and equivalents under other umbrella student associations, to implement sexual assault policies in their organizations that will fit their structure and needs; 5) Promote campaigns related to the Task Force mandate other than the policy, such as consent campaigns, to help foster a respectful culture on campus at the student level; 6) The Task Force may also share proposals or recommendations to other University bodies that are facing the same issues in their student associations and clubs.
BUDGET In order for the Task Force to function sustainably ASFA needs to fund its endeavours as it is not fair to ask non-ASFA members to seek out funding or incur costs themselves. The following is the proposed budget. 1) Room Booking and Accessibility - $850
 This would cover elements such as providing child care for committee members, transit fare, making material accessible such as Braille and so on
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2) Printing and Campaigns Material - $500 Documents, posters, banners, pamphlets, website domain, etc… 3) Food and Beverage for Meetings and Public Gatherings - $500 4) Honorariums - $600 Consultations from other University groups, outreach coordinator, graphic designer, etc… 5) Legal Advising on Policy - $900 The Task Force will use ASFA lawyers which are already paid to be on retention. 6) Trainings for Committee Members and Workshops for Students -$650 These trainings include either trainings that the committee members would like to receive or workshops that the Task Force would like to give to students-at-large. Total: $4000
ADVOCACY COORDINATOR ASFA needs to hire an Advocacy Coordinator for three reasons: 1) The Association was mandated to give consent and power dynamic trainings to the incoming executives of the Member Associations. However, this is a large mandate for a current executive to take on. 2) There are many “anonymous” complaints being brought forward and used to remove people from spaces, sometimes they are legitimate yet sometimes the rhetoric of safe spaces and anonymity are used for political reasons. Therefore, it would be useful to have on person in charge of receiving complaints and helping executives, councillors, and member-at-large come to a resolution, 3) Finally, the Task Force will be a lot of work and requires a paid chair. The Advocacy Coordinator should not be a member of the executive and should not attend council unless they have to present a report or mediate a conflict. The position should not be political in any sense. They will be responsible for organizing the power dynamic trainings twice a year after the general elections and by-elections for the ASFA and MA executives. They shall also attend the ASFA Advocacy committee meetings but not be the chair. They shall work on a yearly contract of $18,300 which is based off of 52 weeks X 21 hours a week X $16.75 / hour which matches the salary of our office manager. Out of the 21 hours a week they shall hold 2 hours of office time which will be open to students and they shall have accessible spaces available at both campuses The reason for this is that we want them to be the liaison between the ASFA executives and councillors when minor complaints arise and help direct students to the proper resources should serious complaints arise. Finally they shall be the chair of the Student Led Task Force on the Intersectional Issues of Sexual Assault and ensure that ASFA uphold and respect the mandate of the Task Force.
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