UPEI student group to hold sexual violence awareness workshop

UPEI'S Our Turn chapter, a national student group focused on sexual violence prevention, will hold its first sexual violence awareness workshop for students next month.

PaxtonCaseley, UPEI'sOur Turn chair, said she is glad to see UPEIhas reopened the sexual assault policy, and isworking on a stand-alone policy.

• UPEI working to improve sexual assault policy that earned it D+

Caseley also likes that the university is opening a sexual assault centre with one full-time paid staff person, but she saidthere needs to be student education around the issue too.

"It's good to have supports in place to help people, but you need to also take a prevention tactic, and that is something that Our Turn works towards, is prevention and support."

The workshop will focus on consent, rape culture and sexual violence.

Supports idea of campus survey

Caseleyrecentlyreturned from a status of women conference in Ottawa on sexual violence data collection on campuses.

"We talked about the issues of sexual violence on campus, and what that looks like, and what kind of acts happen, and what the general relationships and conditions arekind of trying to identify who is affected the most, and then how do you ask proper questions to get the data so we can begin to address this," said Caseley.

She thinks it would be a good idea to survey UPEI students about their experience with sexual violence a project Our Turn might be able to do with the Student Union and the university administration in the future.

• MORE P.E.I. NEWS |UPEI offering master's degree in tourism
• MORE P.E.I. NEWS |Why finding an apartment in Charlottetown won't get easier