On Friday, March 18 the Winona State University chapter of MSUSA hosted State Representative Erin Murphy to discuss her affirmative consent bill, which works to prevent sexual assault on college campuses.
According to a copy of her bill handed out at the Pizza and Politics event Friday, affirmative consent is sober, continuous and verbally agreed on by both partners.
The bill states: “consent must be given by words or actions that create mutually understandable, unambiguous permission.”
Furthermore, her bill states silence is not consent and neither is consent given previously or for different forms of sexual activity. Consent may be withdrawn at any time. People who are unable to properly communicate, understand, or are physically impaired because of drugs, alcohol or asleep, are unable to give affirmative consent.
Seems a little complicated doesn’t it? Essentially Murphy’s bill boils down to this: “yes means yes.”
An affirmative consent policy eliminates the idea that sexual activity is only nonconsensual if the partner verbally says “no.” To me, this is logical and quite frankly, obvious, but since sexual violence is still a prevalent issue across U.S. campuses, it seems students just aren’t getting it.
According to Winona State’s website page on our Sexual Violence Policy, no type of sexual violence or “other forms of non-consensual sexual activity will be tolerated.”
Although I applaud the university for having a policy in the first place, the policy at no point, as listed on the web page, defines what “non-consensual sexual activity” is. Students coming to Winona State and even those graduating receive little to no education on consent while at school.
Freshmen are required to take two online courses on alcohol and marijuana before starting school. However, we need to do more education for incoming and current students on consent and sexual violence. Our current standards at Winona State are not clear enough or good enough to protect students from experiencing sexual violence during their time here.
While the RE Initiative has done an outstanding job of educating my peers (and myself) on gender-based violence over the past few years, I believe Winona State needs to adopt Murphy’s affirmative consent policy on sexual violence.
Adopting and enforcing affirmative consent will eliminate the grey areas of what is consensual and will ultimately ensure the safety of students. By defining what consent is and holding students to that in the university’s policy, students can feel perpetrators of sexual violence will be held accountable for their actions.
Kim Schneider
Op-ed
