Almost 600 first-year students living in Trinity Hall attended this year’s consent workshops organised by Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU).
The figure – 585 students attended – represents a 14 per cent increase on the number of students who attended the workshops last year. The workshops are organised by TCDSU’s consent committee.
In March, TCDSU voted to introduce a full-time consent intern. Rachel Skelly, a former student who sat on the union’s consent committee for three years, was appointed to the position.
Speaking to The University Times, Skelly called the attendance “fantastic” and said she was “delighted to have had such a major increase”.
“We are also going through the feedback forms and they are overwhelmingly positive”, she said.
Last week, Skelly told The University Times that the committee is “still working with the FRIES [freely given, retractable, informed, enthusiastic, specific] model” for students in Halls, but she added that “we’ve made a few changes. We’re making the workshops more inclusive … we’ve made the scenarios more inclusive, so that all students feel capable of engaging”.
The committee will also extend education around consent to members of the College’s staff over the coming year.
Consent classes have already been given to some staff members at the Pav, with plans in place to run consent workshops with tutors, assistant wardens and assistant junior deans this year.
A consent-themed event run by TCDSU and Trinity Visual Arts Society this week had over 20 people in attendance, Skelly said.
Skelly said she also wants to expand collaboration with sports clubs and societies, and said accessibility is an important part of consent education. “Students from different cultural backgrounds, different religious backgrounds, where they’re coming from, consent and sexual activity is discussed in a very different way”, she said.
“We want to make sure it’s accessible to them and that’s it’s culturally sensitive information that they’re getting.”
The steering group is currently in the process of developing a new misconduct policy for the College. In addition to Trinity-specific initiatives, Skelly is also working to develop a streamlined reporting tool in several other third-level institutes in Ireland.
The aim, she said, is to “be able to give some kind of indication of what’s happening on campuses across the country”.
“We’re hoping that we’ll be able to develop that so there’s consistent reporting happening across the country”, she said. “A lot of the time we’re getting requests from other media outlets for statistics on what’s happening on college campuses”.
“It would be fantastic if all the HEIs had the same reporting system so we’re comparing like with like, to give a better understanding of what’s really happening”, Skelly added.
