UNBC still wants your input on the rough draft of its Sexual Violence and Misconduct Policy.
It’s now provincial law that all post-secondary schools have a plan to deal with sexual crimes and to support survivors.
The school’s Associate VP of People and Risk, Organizational Design and Risk Barb Daigle hopes to make the campus more supportive by teaching everyone how to deal with any situation.
“So a student could go to a faculty member and disclose something, even if they were talking to each other sort of a peer-to-peer thing. We really want to make sure that the whole community is trained.”
This policy will be a “living document” where the school will always be open to updating and bettering its protocols. Daigle and others preparing the document have spent weeks hearing from campus groups, stakeholders, and the public. Daigle knows it’s a very sensitive and important topic, which is why those involved are looking for the best method to approach each situation.
“There’s a real risk to the student of identification of being re-triggered in terms of the trauma that they’ve gone through, so it’s a difficult thing in an environment as small as UNBC to even collect the information but to also then disclose the information.”
After the April 21st public consultation deadline, the document will be presented to UNBC’s Board of Governers sometime in early May.
The deadline for the document to be submitted to the BC government is May 18th.