In the wake of the report of a sexual assault filed with the university, new policies on sexual violence and non-academic codes of conduct are scheduled to be released in a week, said Jeffrey Carleton, communication director at St. Thomas.
Carleton said the new policies are not being rolled out because of the reported sexual assault but were already being formulated before the report happened.
“We have two new policies that are in the very final stages of review,” said Carleton.
On the recent sexual assault allegation Carleton would not give a specific date, only saying the assault took place in September.
“We have received a report of an incident, and we are investigating, and the city police are also investigating,” said Carleton. “I can’t say anymore beyond that at this point.”
Carleton confirmed that the university is aware of the identity of the victim, but would not comment on if the university knows the alleged assailant.
A CBC news investigation last year indicated that many universities were underreporting sexual assaults on campus. A right to information request revealed that STU had actually had six reported sexual assault cases between 2009 and 2013, rather than the two previously reported.
The new policy on sexual violence, according to Carleton, would include a policy statement on sexual violence. The policy would also detail steps responders would follow when made aware of an allegation of sexual assault.
The report of the alleged sexual assault comes at a time when the STU community appears more concerned with the issue. During Welcome Week there were workshops on sexual health and consent.
A CBC report of the sexual assault, came on the same day the university screened the Academy Award nominated film The Hunting Ground, a documentary about sexual assaults on American campuses.
This isn’t the only recent allegation of campus sexual assault.
Last April the New Brunswick Beacon, a website published by fourth-year journalism students, released an investigative report alleging that at least four sexual assaults were committed against STU students in the past five years.
Prior to publication, Barry Craig, vice-president academic, spoke to Jan Wong’s fourth-year class about concerns the university had.
Addressing suggestions the STU administration tried to prevent the story from being published, Carleton was clear.
“I’m not aware of any steps that were taken to try and kill that story,” said Carleton. “What the university did was have the stories, that the students had written, reviewed by a lawyer to make sure they weren’t libellous. If as [The Aquinian] asserts we were trying to kill or spike those stories, why would we go to the extent of having them legally reviewed?”
When Carleton was asked if the stories were allowed to run out of fear they would be leaked to another media outlet Carleton said, “I know for a fact that other news organizations were not going to touch the stories because there were legal concerns.”
In response to the rumours STU administration tried to kill the story Jan Wong, the professor of the class who wrote the investigative piece, points to the legal review.
“That legal review [was] not a normal legal review. A normal legal review happens quickly,” said Wong. “I think the university didn’t want to overtly quash the story. They didn’t want to quash it; they didn’t want it published either.”
Wong said her students approached the CBC. The outlet was initially interested, but wavered. Wong says we will never know if the series could’ve been published elsewhere.
“Jeffrey Carleton says no one would touch it, that’s an unknowable,” said Wong. “What is knowable is that I got tweets and messages from professional journalists across the country.”
