This week we are joined by Caroline Harris, a University of Puget Sound alum and Crime Victim Advocate at the Kitsap Sexual Assault Center, who talks about what college-age students are doing to address consent. During her final year at UPS, Caroline completed a capstone project that looked at the theoretical framework around consent and the theory of consent – in doing this she interviewed peers about consent and pulled recurring themes from their conversation to expand upon how people view consent in their lives versus what is taught in consent education.
In This Episode:
Consent Breakdown There is a national push for consent education on campuses, but there isn’t a lot of overlap between this education and how it is carried out in student’s lives. As Caroline mentions, consent is typically explained in metaphors, without talking candidly about consent in relation to sex or physical situations, which makes it difficult for the conversation to feel applicable to people’s lived experiences.
Healthy Love Caroline highlights that college is late in a person’s life to begin the conversation about consent, ideally these conversations would happen at a much younger age and don’t need to be centered around sex, because consent is present in almost everything we do. YWCA Pierce County runs a prevention program in Tacoma high schools that focuses on promoting healthy relationships and how to identify and create healthy practices for teens that they can continue to practice later on.
Starting Conversations When approaching the conversation about consent with younger people, removing sex from the conversation is a great way to begin. Telling someone that their wishes are respected in that place and when they say no it is respected and heard. These conversations are so important because they range from giving someone a hug to playing with toys. It teaches kids that they have control over their body and that they can speak up when someone is making them uncomfortable.
Left to right: Laine, Claire and Caroline.