Summary of update (September 2024):

• Since most of the UASAC’s services were halted in November, staff has been reduced further, to about half. Volunteers have also not been called back, and volunteer recruitment is deferred. A few new staff have been brought in.

• The University of Alberta did not meaningfully engage with our calls to bring in support from external organizations in order to provide continuity of sexual violence services on campus, and they did not accept our repeated invitations to meet with them to brainstorm other options for making services available on campus.

• Thankfully, the University of Alberta commits to restoring drop-in hours and educational programming for the upcoming semester. We are unsure if drop-in will remain a crisis intervention service, given the lack of trained volunteers and staff and ambiguous language used on the UASAC website. UASAC services and operations are undergoing an external review by a consulting agency named Possibility Seeds, and we are hopeful that the review will be made public on the UASAC website.

• The failure of the University of Alberta to ensure the availability of sexual violence services on campus is a systemic issue, and it is not reducible to the decisions of one or two people.

• We are all part of a community of survivors and advocates. Thank you for your support.

Hi, everyone,

We are so grateful to each of you for having signed the petition to restore services at the University of Alberta Sexual Assault Centre (UASAC). Limited drop-in hours have since opened up at the UASAC, which might not have occurred without your support. The petition is now a few months old, and we are sending you the following update.

Part of the impetus for this update is an article from May in the student newspaper, The Gateway (thegatewayonline.ca/2024/05/u-of-a-sexual-assault-....) We feel the need to clarify some points in the article that we find misleading. University representative Melissa Padfield claims that “[w]e’ve always had the ability for survivors to connect during the same kind of hours that they were able to connect to before”, although drop-in hours could benefit from being “beef[ed] up”. While it is true that survivors continue to have access to support through online and phone/text channels such as Alberta’s One Line and the Central Alberta Sexual Assault Support Centre, the UASAC’s in-person services offer a quality of support that contrasts with those accessed online and by phone/text, so that the services are not interchangeable. Padfield also offers that perhaps survivors “didn’t feel that we were available for services and supports”, as if survivors might be simply misinterpreting the availability of sexual violence services on campus. But in addition to any feelings of being neglected by the university – feelings that would be valid – services themselves have been, and continue to be, not available as before. For one, the UASAC website demonstrates that hours for drop-in crisis intervention are not back to 9AM to 5PM on weekdays, plus 5PM to 8PM twice a week: as of September 2, they remain at less than 50% of what they used to be (ualberta.ca/current-students/sexual-assault-centre....) And more generally, it is a stretch to take seriously any of Padfield’s testimonials of campus services when The Gateway reported that “to [Padfield’s] knowledge, the UASAC and other psychological support services [were] available to students in need” back in January (thegatewayonline.ca/2024/01/u-of-a-students-voice-...), as if Padfield was not even aware of any interruption to the UASAC months after its initial disruption in November.

Since November, when the UASAC Director was terminated from her position and the majority of UASAC services were halted, staff has been reduced further, to about half, by losing three more employees in January (thegatewayonline.ca/2024/02/more-u-of-a-sexual-ass....) The contributions of these three staff members included educational workshops and drop-in crisis intervention support, in addition to services for clients by appointment, such as assistance with university accommodations and accompaniment to legal or medical appointments. Over thirty education and drop-in crisis intervention volunteers remain uninvited to resume their work; and volunteer recruitment for the upcoming school year has not occurred, as it is “currently on hold” (ualberta.ca/current-students/sexual-assault-centre....) (To our knowledge, only a social worker and a new assistant dean have been added to the UASAC so far, and an interim director was briefly added. We are told that more staff positions are planned to be posted). One of the most maddening aspects of the University of Alberta’s management of its sexual violence services is its lack of engagement with the possibility of interim services: our suggestion to bring people from external organizations (for example, the Sexual Assault Centre of Edmonton) to campus while the UASAC’s capacity is limited was not met with meaningful engagement by the Dean of Students and former interim Director. Other suggestions might have been offered, but repeated invitations to meet with us and brainstorm together were not accepted, and it is challenging to think of more ways to facilitate the provision of sexual violence services when our question for why services were interrupted in the first place remains unanswered by them.

On a more hopeful note, the UASAC website has been updated with a plan to continue increasing services, with a “commit[ment] to having full-time drop-in hours and educational and volunteer programming available for the Fall 2024 term” (ualberta.ca/current-students/sexual-assault-centre....) Even though this conflicts with the aforementioned delay in volunteer recruitment, stating this commitment is itself a positive step forward, considering the university previously had “no timeline as to when UASAC will [re-]open”, even months after it was initially restricted (thegatewayonline.ca/2024/02/more-u-of-a-sexual-ass....) This plan includes consultation with an organization called Possibility Seeds for a review of the UASAC; and we are hopeful for transparency in this process, that we all might have access to their review on the UASAC website. However, without bringing in and training front-line volunteers and staff for the upcoming academic year, it is unclear how a timely restoration of services and implementation of the results of the review might be realized. The lack of volunteers and reduced staff, combined with the changing language on the UASAC website around drop-in services (“drop-in advising” or just “drop-in”, rather than “crisis intervention”) raises flags for a possible change in the quality of in-person services provided by the UASAC. This is particularly concerning given that the UASAC is, to our knowledge, the only centre in Edmonton specific to sexual violence that offers in-person, drop-in crisis intervention to students, university employees and other workers, and the broader public.

It is important to note that while certain people like the Dean of Students and former interim Director identify themselves as leaders through their updates on the UASAC website and therefore hold particular responsibility for the care of survivors, it would be misguided to suggest that they are simply deciding to restrict sexual violence services on campus, as if this entire situation could be reduced to a few decisions that a few people are making. This is a systemic issue. The University of Alberta as a whole holds responsibility around sexual and gender-based violence on campus: 3a) of its Sexual and Gender-Based Violence Policy (accessible at ualberta.ca/provost/policies-and-procedures/sexual...) lays out the University of Alberta’s institutional responsibilities, including providing “institution-wide education” (iii.) around sexual violence and “coordinated and comprehensive supports for [survivors] to reduce barriers to participation in [university life] that occur as a result of [sexual and gender-based violence]” (vii.). Upholding this policy and procedures arguably involves ensuring full functionality of UASAC services, or at least ensuring continuity of those services if the UASAC cannot provide them at a given time. The University of Alberta is not holding itself to account for its severe restrictions on the availability of sexual violence services on campus. We have been unable to find a mechanism internal to the university that could pressure the return of services (the mechanism that we are aware of requires complaints to be directed toward an individual, which is not representative of this systemic issue); and we have not found a reasonable external avenue to file a formal complaint (an Alberta human rights complaint, for example, would involve connecting with a survivor who satisfies particular criteria for filing the complaint, which is difficult to do in a way that respects confidentiality). The inadequacy of formal avenues of justice is not new in the area of sexual violence; options like the criminal legal system often do not address sexual assault sufficiently, or safely (https://www.leaf.ca/project/avenues-to-justice/)..) We are also admittedly new to this kind of advocacy and are unsure how we can be most effective for survivors.

We don’t know how many people in crisis are being missed. This is an unfortunate reality of a confidential service whose overseer has shut its eyes to those who it served. We also cannot quantify the effect of restrictions of education services on the continuation of rape culture on campus.

But “official” supports such as those found at sexual assault centres are not the only supports for survivors. The dedicated and caring front-line staff that thankfully remain able to do their work at the UASAC, they are part of a network of care that can include families, friends, and inner sources of strength. It is also reassuring to see others advocating for the restoration of sexual violence services on campus, from the open letters submitted by organizations such as Sexual Assault Voices of Edmonton (https://savedmonton.com/palestine-uasac/), the Non-Academic Staff Association (nasa.ualberta.ca/letter-concern-regarding-u-sexual...), and the Students’ Union (theflame.su.ualberta.ca/en/blog/2024/02/01/uasu-an...), to the quieter acts on campus, like where flyers for the petition were kept posted and not simply torn down. This advocacy includes all of you, in having made your support visible by signing the petition. We cannot thank you enough for being here with survivors and showing your support.