Student Life is conducting a survey to assess the climate around sexualized violence at UFV. The anonymous survey will look at the thoughts and experiences of UFV students on sexualized violence, and the adequacy of UFV’s current responses.
The survey will be available for all current students to take starting Nov. 12, over student email and on the UFV website. Students will have until Dec. 3 to respond, and will have the option to put their name in a draw for $50 on their student card.
The results of the survey will help inform updates to UFV’s sexualized violence policies, which will be undergoing revisions over the next eight to 10 months, and to assess any gaps in services that UFV and Student Life provide, such as workshops.
UFV will be conducting its government-mandated review of its sexualized violence policies during the survey’s response period, but Greg Mather, manager of student wellness and development at Student Life, said that the survey is more focused on informing an immediate response than policy change.
“The policy is a core document, and then we look at our response and our processes and if that’s not a policy piece, then we’re very adaptable and in the moment adaptable,” Mather said. “If we’re doing something and we’re like, ‘Oh, this is not working for our students,’ and we’re hearing that from this climate survey, we can respond a little more quickly than the bureaucracy can sometimes.”
From 2015 to 2018, UFV had six incidences of allegations of sexual assault on campus that were reported to Student Life. Three of those incidents, all from 2018, were passed on to the Abbotsford Police department for investigation. During this same time period there were 11 reported allegations of sexual harassment on UFV campuses.
Mather said that UFV is not immune to sexualized violence, but that UFV only receives reports or disclosures.
“So, that’s just a minority of what is probably happening, not only on our campus but the wider community. That’s what all that kind of research is pointing to, that it’s a hidden crime or unknown kind of stat,” Mather said.
Bryanna Anderson, student support coordinator at Student Life, added that with the #MeToo movement, among other recent sexualized violence awareness campaigns, it is likely that students are growing more comfortable coming forward to report incidents.
“It’s really hard to get a sense of the actual numbers because as people become more comfortable with the process and the idea of reporting, we’re going to see more of those people come to us,” Anderson said.
The topics covered in the survey will address some of the knowledge gaps caused by the fact that an incident must be reported to be officially known about by the university. Topics will be broad, with questions ranging from sexualized violence experiences on campus to understanding of current UFV policies.
“[Things such as] how do people feel about the topic and how do they perceive the institution to be responding to it, but then also their actual experiences so we can find out how prevalent it is on campus,” Anderson said.
The UFV survey is based off of the Association of American Universities Campus Climate Survey, a large-scale survey conducted in the U.S. for undergraduate and graduate students, and has received ethics approval from the UFV Human Research Ethics Board (HREB).
Students will have the option at the end of the survey to be sent to a website separate from the survey where they can sign up for a draw for one of 10 $50 in “Cascade cash” (money loaded onto student cards) gift cards. There will also be an option to take a second anonymous survey about the student’s response to the language and ideas in the first survey.
Data analysis will be done internally by several members of the Student Life In this Together — Sexualized Violence Prevention Team. The team consists of five members of Student Life who have worked to develop the survey over the last 10 months.
Mather emphasized that the survey is for everyone, not just those who have experienced sexualized violence, and the more responses the survey receives, the better informed Student Life and UFV will be when responding to sexualized violence on campus.
“It’s a really great opportunity to have your voice heard and inform institutional policy, which isn’t always an option students have,” Anderson said. “This is a really good opportunity so that this process is led and driven by students.”
