Saskia Clubb, Vice President: Activities and Employability for Oxford Brookes Student Union, writes about developments in Sexual Consent Education at Oxford Brookes.
In September 2021, a Sexual Consent Education short course was made available to all students at Brookes, and another course made available to staff, via Moodle. This was the result of work by the Brookes Sexual Consent Education project group.
As Oxford Brookes’ Student Union’s Vice-President: Activities and Employability, I sit on this group. From the start of the project, Oxford Brookes’ Student Union elected officers and staff and a range of University staff have worked together to decide how to create, roll out and promote these courses. The courses were co-created with the sexual health and wellbeing charity Brook.
Saskia Clubb, Vice President: Activities and Employability for Oxford Brookes Student Union, on the ‘Let’s Talk about Consent’ roadshow.
In November 2021, the group took the “Let’s Talk About Consent” roadshow around the University’s campuses. The important tagline “Let’s Talk About Consent” centres the whole project and is what we encouraged students to open up to us about. Members of the team attended a Brookes campus every day to discuss the Sexual Consent Education short course with students and encourage them to complete it. I spoke to hundreds of students – some that had never heard of the course and some that had completed it and had feedback to give. All of the feedback gathered during these events is being used to further improve the courses.
Additionally, we were promoting our event for International Day of Consent on November 30th. For this day, we organised an online panel of consent experts to discuss the importance of talking about consent. I chaired the panel, and was joined by a range of experts from Brook Young People, University of Oxford SU and other organisations. Oxford Brookes staff and students, as well as partner schools and colleges, were invited to watch the live event, and could pre-submit questions and ask questions throughout. You can watch the video of the event here.
We have another event coming up soon too! During Oxford Brookes Student Union’s Women’s Week (which begins with International Women’s day on 08 March), we are holding our second online panel, on 10 March at 17:00, this time focusing on the question of how to talk about consent. Again, I will be joined by a panel of experts and staff. All students are welcome to attend, ask questions, and get involved in the conversation. You can register for this event using this link.
Going forward, the Sexual Consent Education team are looking to implement at implementing bystander intervention training in the University, starting a podcast series with students focused on discussing consent, as well as running a series of webinars.
In September, the University intends to make the Sexual Consent Education short course mandatory for all students. We would really welcome students completing the course beforehand and giving us your feedback. You can find the course by searching ‘Sexual Consent Education’ on moodle. It only takes around 70 minutes to complete!
You can find out more about the Sexual Consent Education project here, and you can always contact the team on sexualconsenteducation@brookes.ac.uk and online.