After 400 first-year students took part in consent workshops in Trinity Hall in September, Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) will make the workshops available to all students across college during the coming year.
The next set of workshops are to be held during Body and Soul week, which begins on November 21st and is run by TCDSU. Workshops will also be organised on certain Shift Days throughout the year, which will see the union also provide information and promote sexual health for Trinity students.
The key difference between the workshops held prior to Freshers’ Week and those to be run throughout the year is that these classes will no longer be restricted to first-year students. The workshops will now be open for those who missed the September workshops, as well as to those who would like to attend from other years.
Speaking to The University Times, TCDSU Welfare Officer, Aoibhinn Loughlin, said that there were “loads of students” who wanted to take part in the workshops, “but because it was a pilot project, it was aimed specifically at first-year students” living in Trinity Hall.
Loughlin explained that following the “success” of the Trinity Hall workshops, the union now wants to bring the project to all first-year students next year.
“In the meantime there are some very highly-trained facilitators who will be able to do the consent workshops during the year for any student who wants to attend”, she added.
In early September, 24 facilitators were trained to run the consent workshops. The 12 students and 12 staff members selected received training from the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre and from Dr Pádraig MacNeela from the School of Psychology in NUI Galway.
Loughlin said they were “surprised” at the high attendance at the workshops in September “given that there was talk beforehand that they would have to be mandatory”, noting that “sometimes we had almost full attendance”, which the organisers “were delighted about”.
“They are actually quite fun, they’re a bit of craic, they’re entertaining, they’re discussing a really serious issue but in a very positive way”, Loughlin added.
The project began after a motion put forward to a meeting of TCDSU council last January by current TCDSU President Kieran McNulty, then Citizenship Officer, which mandated TCDSU’s welfare officer to help organise mandatory consent workshops in Trinity Hall for all incoming residents.
The topic of consent workshops and teaching consent in higher education institutions has become an international talking point, with the introduction of workshops in Trinity Hall receiving national and international media attention.
While feedback from the workshops is still being compiled, the response from those who engaged in the project has been positive, according to McNulty. Speaking to The University Times, he said he hoped that the union would be able to “continue the project” in future years.
The results of a TCDSU survey on sexual consent, which were published in January 2015. The results reported that 25.2 per cent of female students and 4.5 per cent of male students had a “non-consensual sexual experience”. Forty-two per cent of women reported having experienced verbal harassment while studying at Trinity, compared to 7.2 per cent of men.
