This past week, The McGill Tribune spoke to Angela Campbell, associate provost (Policies, Procedures and Equity), and a pioneer of McGill’s new Policy against Sexual Violence. In this correspondence, the Tribune asked specifically about Our Turn—a third party inter-university action plan that grades Canadian universities on these types of policies—pointing out that McGill scored zero for failing to process “faculty and staff […] under the same SVP (Sexual Violence Policy) as students.” Her response was rather curt.
“This is false,” Campbell wrote. “The Policy applies to all members of the McGill community. Please read the Policy.”
How is it possible that Campbell had such a different interpretation from Our Turn’s report on McGill’s Policy against Sexual Violence? The answer is that Campbell’s claim isn’t entirely unfounded, but it’s not entirely right either.
Technically, Campbell is correct. As outlined in Section 1, “this policy applies to all Members of the University Community,” and faculty and staff members fall under the ‘University Community.’ However, when it comes to methods of recourse, students and faculty are held to different standards. Marc-Antoine Séguin, the director of Student Advocacy and University Affairs for the Legal Information Clinic at McGill (LICM), a not-for-profit organization that helps students navigate McGill policy, explained what exactly this difference entails.