McMaster Pushes Out SACHA from Welcome Week Training

SACHA is sad and frus­trat­ed that we have not been invit­ed back to train McMas­ter Uni­ver­si­ty Wel­come Week reps this August.

Since 2014, SACHA has led train­ings for McMas­ter Uni­ver­si­ty Wel­come Week reps. We take pride in our train­ings’ focus on how to take every­day actions to end rape cul­ture and cre­ate a cul­ture of con­sent on cam­pus year-round.

In July, we were told that SACHA facil­i­ta­tors are no longer need­ed and that McMas­ter staff will offer their own edu­ca­tion instead.

For SACHA, this means the loss of a $9000 con­tract that will have an impact on our bud­get. It is also a loss for the McMas­ter com­mu­ni­ty as it means that the over 1000 fac­ul­ty and res­i­dence Wel­come Week reps – whose role is to sup­port first year stu­dents dur­ing Wel­come Week – will not have an oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn from sub­ject mat­ter experts or learn more about com­mu­ni­ty based resources and practice.

SACHA is not fight­ing for a spot back at the Wel­come Week table. Wel­come Week reps will undoubt­ed­ly miss out on SACHA’s sur­vivor-cen­tered approach to pre­ven­tion edu­ca­tion. We’re excit­ed about the pos­si­bil­i­ties of new rela­tion­ships that this extra time gives SACHA. Part­ner­ships and col­lab­o­ra­tion are essen­tial to end­ing sex­u­al vio­lence and a core val­ue of SACHA’s. We can’t do this work on our own and nei­ther can oth­er institutions.

I’m con­fused, and deeply dis­ap­point­ed in McMas­ter for their deci­sion not to work with experts (SACHA) for their upcom­ing wel­come week. I don’t under­stand what led them to this deci­sion. SACHA’s edu­ca­tion work­shops around sex­u­al assault, vio­lence, and oppres­sion are extreme­ly valu­able for their nuanced under­stand­ing and will­ing­ness to work with the com­mu­ni­ty to erad­i­cate sex­u­al vio­lence. As a McMas­ter grad­u­ate, I am dev­as­tat­ed and deeply ashamed. — Abar­na Nathan, McMas­ter Uni­ver­si­ty Graduate

Sad­ly, SACHA’s indi­vid­ual coun­selling is not the only pro­gram with a wait­list at our cen­tre. Our Pub­lic Edu­ca­tion Pro­gram is booked months in advance and turns away about eight requests for work­shops a month. It is staffed by a sin­gle part time work­er who cov­ers work­shops, events, com­mu­ni­ty col­lab­o­ra­tion, and media (both social media and lega­cy media). Giv­en the high demand for our skills and time, it is frus­trat­ing that our work and the work of cen­tres like ours across Ontario con­tin­ues to be so undervalued.

Too many times, SACHA encoun­ters orga­ni­za­tions who want to depre­ci­ate our work while doing lit­tle to change the fun­da­men­tal cul­ture of their orga­ni­za­tion or to stop the con­di­tions that make rape possible.

We want McMas­ter Uni­ver­si­ty to com­mit to a strong healthy year-round rela­tion­ship with SACHA where our skills and inter­sec­tion­al approach to the work is valued.

His­to­ry:

In 2012 YWCA Hamil­ton and SACHA applied for fund­ing from the Sta­tus of Women Cana­da to take a look at how McMas­ter could be bet­ter focused on end­ing gen­der based vio­lence. Through the two-year It’s Time Project SACHA and YWCA staff cre­at­ed eight rec­om­men­da­tions includ­ing the cre­ation of a Sex­u­al Vio­lence Response Coor­di­na­tor posi­tion and for McMas­ter to cre­ate a cam­pus-wide sex­u­al vio­lence pre­ven­tion campaign.

With the release of the Ontario government’s Sex­u­al Vio­lence Action Plan in March 2015, many uni­ver­si­ties were scram­bling to cre­ate Sex­u­al Vio­lence Pre­ven­tion Task Forces or poli­cies and pro­to­cols to respond to sex­u­al vio­lence, because of the hard work of local fem­i­nist orga­ni­za­tions – SACHA and YWCA – McMas­ter Uni­ver­si­ty was well posi­tioned to meet the cam­pus require­ments of the plan.

Also due to ground­work done by SACHA, McMas­ter Uni­ver­si­ty was one of the first cam­pus­es in Ontario to cre­ate and hire a Sex­u­al Vio­lence Response Coordinator.

This is only one exam­ple of how cam­pus­es ben­e­fit from work­ing close­ly with their local com­mu­ni­ty-based sex­u­al assault cen­tres. Yet, most times, we see the uni­ver­si­ty get­ting the praise while com­mu­ni­ty orga­ni­za­tions are doing most of the labour.

Why It’s Impor­tant to Work With Com­mu­ni­ty Based Sex­u­al Assault Centres:

Fem­i­nists whose every­day work is sup­port­ing sur­vivors are espe­cial­ly well posi­tioned to col­lab­o­rate with orgs look­ing for sup­port to end sex­u­al violence.

The Ontario Coali­tion of Rape Cri­sis Cen­tres writes in their ​‘Draw the Line and Edu­ca­tion­al Com­pe­ten­cies’ paper:

Pub­lic edu­ca­tion can also draw con­nec­tions between sys­temic issues (i.e. pre­vail­ing soci­etal atti­tudes jus­ti­fy, tol­er­ate, nor­mal­ize and min­i­mize sex­u­al vio­lence against women and girls[1]; atti­tudes and fac­tors that con­tribute to rape cul­ture[2]) and people’s day to day experiences.

In (2012) Key Best Prac­tices for Effec­tive Sex­u­al Vio­lence Pub­lic Edu­ca­tion Cam­paigns: A Sum­ma­ry, Haskell notes that using pub­lic edu­ca­tion is ​“part of a broad­er range of pre­ven­tion efforts to end sex­u­al vio­lence called the ​‘spec­trum of pre­ven­tion.’ The spec­trum iden­ti­fies that there are mul­ti­ple lev­els of inter­ven­tion and encour­ages peo­ple to move beyond the idea that pre­ven­tion is only about sim­ply pro­vid­ing edu­ca­tion­al or infor­ma­tion­al messages”[3] to one pop­u­la­tion in a giv­en com­mu­ni­ty. Haskell offers a descrip­tion of the six lev­els of pre­ven­tion in the Spec­trum. The Spec­trum offers an over­all strat­e­gy for con­cur­rent­ly pro­vid­ing edu­ca­tion on sex­u­al vio­lence to a vari­ety of com­mu­ni­ties or per­sons (“Lev­els”). Lev­els iden­ti­fied, for exam­ple, include (but are not lim­it­ed to) Strength­en­ing Indi­vid­ual Knowl­edge and Skills, Edu­cat­ing Providers and Fos­ter­ing Coali­tions and Networks[4].

SACHA’s Wel­come Week Involve­ment by the Numbers:

2014:

Cost to McMas­ter: $5000

2015:

Cost to McMas­ter: $5715

2016:

Cost to McMas­ter: $5500

2017:

Cost to McMas­ter – $5500

2018:

Cost to McMas­ter: $9000

SACHA spe­cial­izes in edu­ca­tion to end sex­u­al vio­lence. Work­ing with SACHA is invalu­able to McMas­ter which build com­mu­ni­ty ties which ben­e­fit stu­dents! – Syd­ney, McMas­ter Student

Over the past five years, SACHA has trained over 9676 par­tic­i­pants, in 105 work­shops, and spent 117.5 hours in training.

The hours spent train­ing Wel­come Week reps is a frac­tion of our work with McMas­ter. SACHA also puts time into cur­ricu­lum devel­op­ment, sup­port­ing sur­vivors and allies dur­ing and after the work­shops, cam­pus meet­ings, col­lab­o­ra­tion, and consultation.

A one-hour work­shop is not enough to work through the tremen­dous amount of vic­tim blam­ing mes­sages folks receive through their life­time. It takes many oppor­tu­ni­ties to learn about con­sent before work­shop par­tic­i­pants are able to learn the skills.

We call on McMas­ter Uni­ver­si­ty com­mit to a year round pre­ven­tion plan that includes a diver­si­ty of tac­tics. Com­mu­ni­ty based sex­u­al assault cen­tres must be includ­ed, lis­tened to, and our exper­tise and skills val­ued in these partnerships.

I am sad­dened to hear that SACHA has been dis­in­vit­ed to Wel­come Week at McMaster.

As a stu­dent in the Hon­ours BA of Psy­chol­o­gy, Neu­ro­science and Behav­iour pro­gram at McMas­ter, I can­not stress enough how impor­tant it is to include train­ing for reps via SACHA.

It sur­pris­es me that this deci­sion would be made. — Melis­sa Bridge­man, McMas­ter Student

SACHA by the numbers:

SACHA has been work­ing to sup­port sur­vivors of sex­u­al assault and to pre­vent vio­lence in Hamil­ton since 1975. Found­ed by sur­vivors, SACHA was the sec­ond sex­u­al assault cen­tre to open its doors and the third in Cana­da. We are proud to have near­ly 45 years of expe­ri­ence and look for­ward to the day that cen­tres like SACHA don’t need to exist.

In 2018 SACHA:

• Had 1073 calls on our 24 Hour Sup­port Line
• Sup­port­ed 233 sur­vivors of all gen­ders in indi­vid­ual counselling
• 8571 hours donat­ed by skilled volunteers
• Facil­i­tat­ed 138 work­shops to 4533 participants

SACHA is made up of amaz­ing­ly vibrant staff and vol­un­teers, but because of all the work we get done in a year, we’re quite often mis­tak­en for a much larg­er orga­ni­za­tion. SACHA’s office staff is five full time work­ers and four part time workers.

Rea­sons to Celebrate!

It is pos­si­ble to have healthy equi­table rela­tion­ships with cam­pus­es. We want to shout out Redeemer Uni­ver­si­ty Col­lege who hires SACHA to train their res­i­dence staff and to give a one-hour work­shop to all new students.

Mohawk Col­lege has made a huge com­mit­ment to SACHA including:

• A seat on the college’s Sex­u­al Vio­lence Pre­ven­tion Task Force and both the Stu­dent and Employ­ee Edu­ca­tion Work­ing Groups where SACHA’s input is valued.
• Train­ing for mem­bers on the Task Force and Work­ing Groups so all mem­bers can have a com­mon under­stand­ing of the dynam­ics of sex­u­al­ized vio­lence and best prac­tices in pre­ven­tion education.
• Four two-hour Bystander Inter­ven­tion work­shops offered to staff and stu­dents each fall and win­ter semes­ter facil­i­tat­ed by SACHA.

Mohawk Col­lege has shown respect to SACHA by cov­er­ing the cost not only of our facil­i­ta­tion time, but the time we spend at meet­ings, in con­sul­ta­tion, and prepar­ing cur­ricu­lum. We hope to have more rela­tion­ships like this across the province.

How you can help!

1. Most folks in Hamil­ton don’t know that SACHA exists. Fol­low SACHA on social media and share posts like this one to let your friends know about our work to change the world.
2. The bright side of not being involved in Wel­come Week Rep train­ing is that we have a bit more time to work with groups who are com­mit­ted to the some­times hard and often joy­ful work of cre­at­ing con­sent cul­ture. Get in touch with SACHA – sacha@​sacha.​ca or 905.525.4573 – if you would like to book a SACHA work­shop or col­lab­o­rate.
3. SACHA can always use the help of our incred­i­ble Hamil­ton com­mu­ni­ty. Whether is a dona­tion, orga­niz­ing a fundrais­er, or vol­un­teer­ing, SACHA appre­ci­ates the amaz­ing sup­port of our diverse community.

Signed,

Jes­si­ca Bonil­la-Damptey, Direc­tor and Crick­ett Wilder, Pub­lic Edu­ca­tion Coordinator

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[1] World Health Orga­ni­za­tion. Under­stand­ing and address­ing vio­lence against women. Online: http://​apps​.who​.int/​i​r​i​s​/​b​i​t​s​t​r​e​a​m​/​1​0​6​6​5​/​7​7​4​3​3​/​1​/​W​H​O​_​R​H​R​_​1​2​.​3​5​_​e​n​g.pdf)

[2] See also: Her­mann, D. The Rape Cul­ture. Print­ed in Women: A Fem­i­nist Per­spec­tive (ed. Jo Free­man). Mcgraw Hill, 1994. Retrieved 18 Octo­ber 2011. Avail­able online: 

[3] Haskell, Dr. L. (2012) Key Best Prac­tices for Effec­tive Sex­u­al Vio­lence Pub­lic Edu­ca­tion Cam­paigns: A Sum­ma­ry. Online: http://www.learningtoendabuse.ca/sites/default/files/Best%20Practices.pdf : 3. 

[4] Haskell, Dr. L. (2012) Key Best Prac­tices for Effec­tive Sex­u­al Vio­lence Pub­lic Edu­ca­tion Cam­paigns: A Sum­ma­ry. Online: http://www.learningtoendabuse.ca/sites/default/files/Best%20Practices.pdf : 11.