How times change. It’s now two years since Trinity introduced compulsory consent workshops for first-year students living in Halls, an action to which the country’s newspapers dedicated what seemed like thousands of column inches. It’s also about one year since Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) announced that more than 90 per cent of Halls residents attended the classes in 2017/18.
This week, another year down the line, TCDSU President Shane De Rís was given a platform before the Oireachtas Committee for Education and Skills to demand “tangible support in the form of resources” for a national rollout of consent workshops, something De Rís described as a “necessity”.
There’s a school of political thought, developed by Joseph P Overton, that suggests there exists in popular discourse a “window” that marks out the range of ideas that are acceptable for public discussion. Consent workshops just about fitted inside this window two years ago, when pundits on both sides of the divide offered frank and unapologetic arguments on the merits and evils of consent workshops.
Now, however, it’s clear that the apodictic success of Trinity’s consent classes would render laughable the suggestion that they are a bad idea. Movements like #MeToo and #TimesUp have cast into brighter relief than ever the idea that serious efforts must be made to educate people about the intricacies of consent, and it follows quite straightforwardly that consent workshops are not only sensible, but vital.
That the Oireachtas listened to De Rís, as well as to Síona Cahill, the President of the Union of Students in Ireland, shows that, for politicians, consent classes are now an endeavour worth taking very seriously – and, perhaps more importantly, it demonstrates that when students’ unions campaign well and coherently for issues pertinent to students, they have the power to help effect change on a national level.
In light of the challenge Ireland’s third-level institutions have getting any kind of state funding, financial support for consent workshops may be a ways off. But, even considering how fast the body politic is remoulding itself to address societal shifts in the approach to sex and consent, it’s worth reminding ourselves how central to the conversation TCDSU has been.
