policy & reform campusreview. com. au
Protecting the student body
Can an internet course help prevent sexual assault?
By Alan Berkowitz
Consent about sexual intimacy is a topic that pervades public debate at the moment. It stirs up strong feelings and opens up important conversations about sexual behaviour as we seek to create opportunities for meaningful, healthy and desired sexual relationships for ourselves as well as to ensure them for others.
This is especially true among the student population, where the university experience offers the opportunity to explore issues of sexual identity and expression, among others. In this environment, complexities around consent and what it means, as well as instances of sexual assault, are prevalent.
There are many new experiences – academic, living and social – that come with the university experience. With respect to healthy relationships, it makes sense that universities would offer educational opportunities to students to teach them about consent and related skills, such as how to step in to prevent unwanted situations, or what is called‘ bystander intervention’.
Given the extent of sexual harassment and sexual violence, which we are becoming more and more aware of, one could say that it is not only desirable but the responsibility of educational institutions to provide such training.
Decades of social science research have demonstrated that almost all university students seek to have consent in their personal intimate relationships, but that often they do not know how to be sure that consent is present.
University students also say they want to do something to prevent unwanted sexual relationships and that they respect individuals who‘ step in’ when they see a problematic situation( Berkowitz, 2010). So, if we can agree that educational institutions have a responsibility to provide this kind of learning opportunity, how best can they go about it?
Recent academic research has established that training in consent and bystander intervention prevention, with information about the healthy norms of most students – whether online or in person – is both appreciated by students and effective in teaching consent and empowering bystanders to intervene.
In two recent studies of online sexual assault prevention, two different programs that each combined consent education, bystander intervention and teaching students about healthy norms, were found to be effective( Salazar et al, 2014; Zapp et al, 2018). These three strategies are recommended by experts as effective, science-based best practices( Lonsway et al, 2009), and recent research
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