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2 Institutions’ Policies Review
Speaker: Lisanne Watt, Ministry of Advanced Education, Skills and Training
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Video Transcript
Jennifer Jordan: So thanks again to CJ and Shiloh. And we’re going to move to our next session where we’re actually going to have three presenters who are going to come and present on a review of the current state of policies, best practices in SVM policies, and plain language with SVM policies and processes. So to do the first session, I’d like to introduce Lisanne Watt, senior policy analyst from Advanced Education Skills and Training to present on the current state of policies.
Lisanne Watt: Make it big screen. Okay. Is that one? Okay.
Robynne Devine: [inaudible 00:01:08].
Lisanne Watt: This one? Okay. Thank you, Jennifer. Can everybody hear me back there? No. Okay. Maybe I’ll just try. Okay. I’ll try.
Robynne Devine: On your right.
Lisanne Watt: Two hands and turn pages somehow. We’ll see how this works. First of all, I want to thank everyone for being here today. It’s amazing to see so many people willing to take the time out of their schedules to come and learn more about this important topic, share experiences, and help contribute to some of the work that’s being done. I’m really happy to be here today to start the session on policies to just give a quick overview on where some of the policies relating to sexual violence and misconduct on campuses are.
Lisanne Watt: We completed a very, very high level review of the policies that are currently in place. Just to better understand what is in place in those policies that institutions, what they’ve included, and to identify any kind of common elements or variations within those policies. This review, as I said, was high level, but it also took into consideration that it was just based simply on what was in the policies, noting that many policies also have linkages to other accommodation policies or procedure documents and can sometimes have some other elements to them other than just the policy. We also needed to recognize that in establishing policies and doing this work, institutions were all coming to this work from different capacities, resources, and abilities to establish policies and begin the implementation that was required approximately two years ago.
Lisanne Watt: And lastly, if that wasn’t all enough, we also looked at it with the understanding that each institution’s policy is created in consideration of the unique needs of that student, the students and the campus communities at those institutions. And some of those factors can be numerous and varied, whether it’s having multiple campuses or whether you’re dealing with different student populations, whether… flip my page. Student residences, some campuses have residences, some institutions do not. There’s unique program structures at different institutions. So all of these things add additional levels of complexities to policies that are already very complex and often sensitive. So there’