Students Arriving on New York Campuses Bombarded With Sex Talk
All the talk about rape culture and sex assaults has got colleges over compensating with tons of talk about sex.
From the Associated Press via ABC News.
Sex Talk Part of Curriculum Under New York Campus Safety Law
They’d barely arrived on campus at St. Bonaventure University, but already the new students were talking about hooking up.
Administrators didn’t mind. In fact, they’d encouraged — even required — it to comply with a new state law meant to prevent sex assaults on campuses.
At colleges elsewhere, students watched skits about sex, saw videos on YouTube, had face-to-face sessions at orientation and clicked through online courses for what has become one of the earliest lessons of college life: That only “yes” — not silence or a lack of resistance — is the cue for sex.
In July, New York became the second state, after California, to write the affirmative consent standard into law for campuses. But it’s becoming the norm at colleges around the country that are under the same pressure to reduce and better handle sexual assault cases.
“When they hear the specifics — that it’s about checking in all along the way: ‘Is this OK?’ ‘Are you interested in this?’ ‘Does this feel good?’ — that’s not that unreasonable for people,” said speaker Cindy Pierce, who is hired by colleges to deliver the message.
New York’s “Enough is Enough” legislation, passed with the help of star power from Whoopi Goldberg and Lady Gaga, also gives bystanders who report assaults amnesty from drug or alcohol violations and creates a Students Bill of Rights guaranteeing victims the ability to report assaults and access services.
But it’s the uniform definition of affirmative consent that has students recalling comedian Dave Chappelle’s “Love Contract” skit where he pulls a clipboard from the nightstand and instructs a woman to “Just sign here and here.”
“We get very frequently that bit where you’ve got to get a notarized contract,” said Kelly Ristow, who was brought in by St. Bonaventure to deliver the humor-infused “The Hook-Up: When it’s Hot and When it’s Not,” which made clear the difference between consensual sex and rape.
Sex Talk Part of Curriculum Under New York Campus Safety Law (Associated Press (ABC News))