U of A members help create national framework addressing gender-based violence on campus

Two University of Alberta community members played a crucial role in creating a framework for challenging campus culture around gender-based violence. 

Courage to Act, a national project funded federally by the Ministry of Women and Gender Equality, brought experts from around Canada to create a framework that post-secondary institutions can adapt to address and prevent gender-based violence on campus. After evaluating how well post-secondary institutions adhere to the framework, the federal government will consider how to allocate post-secondary funding. 

Jason Garcia, an education program coordinator at the U of A Sexual Assault Centre, and Deb Eerkes, Director of Student Conduct and Accountability, helped create the framework alongside 29 other advisory committee members. 

Eerkes found working with a team of lawyers, students, professors, and educators allowed the group to view gender-based violence in a holistic and synergistic way.

“It was a very diverse group and we approach sexual violence from different directions — [I wondered] are we even going to be able to see each other’s point of view, nevermind come to some kind of census,” she said. “We really had so many of the same kind of attitudes around what we had to do, a common vision looking forward that was more similar than different.” 

For Garcia, working on the project reminded them that gender-based violence goes beyond the realm of sexual assault — it can also be steeped in racist and non-affirming actions.

“I think some of the things we really need to open our brains up to… [is the question of] is there is even violence in things such as not using people’s pronouns or not taking a hate or Islamophobic act seriously enough,” they said. “There is still a unique degree of harm in this realm that is not that different from sexual violence.”

With 41 per cent of reported sexual assaults coming from students, Garcia says it’s no longer a question of if sexual assault is a problem on campus, but rather what can each member of our community do to address this problem.

“[The report] really helps paint a good case for why everyone on campus should care about gender-based violence,” they said. “It’s not just people like us that have a role, every student, staff, faculty members, and person who even just happens to walk across campus — the moment you touch campus community, you are then someone who is able to make that change.”

Overall, Eerkes hopes this report will push post-secondaries to take a proactive approach to solving gender-based violence.

“It is about the responsibility to prevent and educate as well as to respond — so much of what institutions have done is to wait until something happens,” she said. “This report clearly states that we have an opportunity and obligation to make change at a systemic level, a societal level, and a cultural level.”