Good afternoon. Thank you for inviting me to speak with you today.
I was co-chair of the committee that drafted the new sexual violence policy at the University of Ottawa, which was approved by the board of governors in June 2016. I thought I'd use my time to describe the animating features of our policy and offer some thoughts on the balance that we tried to strike. We tried to incorporate best practices from both the United States and Canada.
My colleague Elizabeth Sheehy and I have written on the subject of violence on university campuses, and we teach a course at the law school on sexual assault law.
I first want to acknowledge that our policy was drafted in the wake of some high-profile incidents at the University of Ottawa that prompted our president to strike a task force on respect and equality to make recommendations on how to combat sexual violence on our campus. It was also helpful to have a provincial government that passed legislation in March of this year that mandated that all universities in Ontario enact stand-alone sexual violence policies. The legislation left the design of those policies to each institution.
The University of Ottawa's policy is guided by two overriding themes: the promotion of a survivor-centred response to sexual violence and the safety of the space in which we work, live, and study. I'll give you a brief overview of how we breathed some life into those principles.
First, on the creation of a safe space, we worked hard to create a policy that did not replicate a criminal justice process. We felt it was important to distinguish the university context and offer both a distinctive process and effective remedies that work for our community.
Survivors of sexual violence can file a formal complaint at any time, so long as the alleged perpetrator is a member of the university community. Membership is defined in the policy to include faculty, students, and staff, so it's a comprehensive policy.
We created a special position, a sexual violence officer, housed within our human rights office, to act as a resource person during the whole process. An important and controversial feature of our policy is that almost all formal complaints must be investigated by an independent external investigator. This raises serious resource questions for the university, but we thought it was important as a due process protection for both parties to the complaint.
We have a review committee that comprises three trained representatives, and they take in the report of the external investigator, as well as written responses by both parties. The review committee must have an in-person meeting with each party, but those meetings are held separately. The two parties do not meet face to face. There is no face-to-face encounter and no opportunity to question each other.
The review committee makes a finding on a balance of probabilities as to whether our policy has been breached, in other words, whether there has been an incident of sexual violence, and it makes recommendations as to the appropriate consequences.
Written reasons for the decision have to be produced and given to both parties, as well as to the person who is tasked with implementing the recommendations.
The consequences are considered safety measures. They are not punitive consequences. They are meant to ensure that both the complainant and the broader university community are safe and feel safe in their work, living, and study situations.
A second guiding principle of our policy is that it is survivor-centred. In addition to the formal complaint process, we are committed to enhancing resources to support survivors on our campus, regardless of where their assault took place. We have partnerships with local community rape crisis centres that work on campus now to offer confidential support to complainants. We collect data on the number of incidents, the choices survivors made in coping, and the resources they sought.
The sexual violence officer will coordinate training for students, faculty, and staff on bystander intervention, positive consent culture, and healthy sex education. So far, over 300 senior administrators and leaders, including our entire board of governors, our senior administrative staff, and all the deans on campus, have received training by a rape crisis centre on how to receive disclosures of sexual assaults and what constitutes consent in law. Our policy makes equality its core foundation and expressly references rape culture.
In closing, while we expect that the University of Ottawa will tweak its policy as implementation unfolds, I am proud of how we came to a feminist, broad-based consensus that involved all of our constituents: faculty, staff, students, unions, and the senior administration.
I am happy to address any questions.