Following the consent workshops organised for residents in Trinity Hall by Trinity College Dublin Students’ Union (TCDSU) and the JCR in Trinity Hall at the start of the year, TCDSU is to develop Trinity-specific consent workshops.
At a meeting of TCDSU’s council meeting on Tuesday, the Welfare Officer of TCDSU, Aoibhinn Loughlin, confirmed that she is working with Trish Murphy, a counsellor at Trinity’s Counselling Service, to coordinate these workshops aimed specifically at the Trinity community.
Speaking to The University Times, Loughlin said that her hope is to have “Trinity-specific workshops by the next academic year”. After the “success” of the optional consent workshops 400 first-year students took part in at Trinity Hall this September, the union is seeking a way to roll out more workshops to the wider student body.
Asked why the upcoming workshops will be Trinity-specific, Loughlin said that “there are some things that make Trinity different”, such as the fact that it is regarded as “a safe space for the LGBT community”. This has led the union to want consent workshops that are non-gender specific, making them accessible and relevant.
This year TCDSU and College introduced gender-neutral bathrooms in the Arts Block as part of their commitment to “recognise and support an individual’s gender identity and gender expression”. Accordingly, Loughlin’s intention for the consent workshops is to “make them gender non-specific”. She will be liaising with Murphy and the Senior Tutor to “decide the appropriate action”.
The workshops are the latest step in the ongoing campaign TCDSU are spearheading to educate the student body on the topic of consent. The union’s survey on sexual consent in 2014 revealed that 25.4 per cent of female students and 4.5 per cent of male students had a “non-consensual sexual experience”. Thirty-one per cent of women and 8 per cent of men admitted to experiencing unwanted physical contact while studying at Trinity.
Murphy, a psychotherapist, lecturer and Irish Times columnist, is one of Ireland’s leading sexual intimacy experts, and one of her research interests is the myths surrounding first sexual experiences.
The introduction of consent workshops in universities around the world, particularly in the UK and and the US, has attracted international attention as well as being subject to some external criticism, particularly from media organisations, but has drawn widespread praise from advocacy groups including mental health charities, LGBT organisations and groups committed to women’s rights and gender equality.
