Student employees
Mandatory Sexual Violence Awareness and Prevention Training
Additional information for student employees at Concordia University
Concordia University is committed to fostering a safe and respectful learning environment and, as a student employee, you play an integral role in upholding this commitment.
In your role as a student employee, you need to be aware of the power you could potentially hold over students, how power dynamics can complicate consent, and the behaviours that can lead to an unhealthy learning and working environment.
Finally, you need to know about the Consensual Romantic or Sexual Relationship Guidelines at Concordia University.
Power dynamics
The mandatory training on sexual violence awareness and prevention (also known as “It Takes All of Us” training) provides information about consent and the situations that can complicate consent. If you have not yet completed this training, please do so as soon as possible. You can complete the “It Takes All of Us" training online. You can also access this training by logging in to the Student Hub and going to My CU Account.
Power dynamics, such as those between students and instructors, may create an environment in which consent is complicated due to the power an instructor has over a student’s grades, athletic opportunities, or employment. For example, can a coach and an athlete have a relationship if the coach has power over the athlete’s career? Can a teaching assistant and a student have a relationship if the teaching assistant can influence the student’s grades? The athlete and student in these examples might feel pressured to do things they do not want to because of these power dynamics.
The types of power you hold as a student employee can also be influenced by systemic forms of power held in categories such as race, gender, ability, class, age, and education. It is important to remember that the impacts of these dynamics are far reaching and exist because of the way many identities are systemically discriminated against and given less validity. You need to be aware of any biases or prejudices that arise in your interactions due to these power dynamics.
Learning environment
Part of your role as a student employee is to help create a healthy learning and working environment. Creating this healthy environment for students means having ethical relationships that are conscious of power dynamics, as well as understanding the behaviours that may result in an unhealthy environment.
Here are some examples of behaviours that can result in an unhealthy learning and working environment and that can create an uncomfortable environment for students:
- Seeing students outside of university hours, especially off campus
- Inviting students to personal engagements
- Offering mentorship to students based on a romantic interest
- Commenting on students’ appearance
- Making sexual comments or jokes
- Making advances
- Flirting
Guidelines
In January 2018, Concordia University released the Consensual Romantic or Sexual Relationship Guidelines.
The guidelines strongly discourage all instructors from commencing or continuing any consensual romantic or sexual relationship with a student. The guidelines define Instructor and Student as follows:
Instructor: Any university employee who is teaching, advising, supervising, mentoring, overseeing the allocation of resources to, and/or coaching students. Such employees include, but are not limited to, full and/or part-time faculty members, faculty administrators, librarians, laboratory or other instructors, principal investigators as well as teaching assistants, research assistants, staff members and coaches and coaching assistants.
Student: Any person registered in a course or program on a full or part-time basis, for credit or not, and includes undergraduate and graduate students, independent students as well as visiting students, exchange students and interns.
Important excerpts from the guidelines
Whenever an instructor is, or in the future might reasonably become, responsible for teaching, advising, allocating resources or supervising a student or, more generally, is or in the future might reasonably be in a position to exercise authority over a student:
- Romantic or sexual relationships between them should be avoided; and
- If such a relationship is not avoided, any existing or past romantic or sexual relationship constitutes an actual or perceived conflict of interest and must be disclosed pursuant to the present guidelines.
- Student employees can disclose to their direct supervisor. Please consult the guidelines for more information on where, and how, to disclose a conflict of interest.
Thank you for taking the time to review this important information for student employees.
We are committed to ensuring you fully understand your responsibilities as a student employee.
If you need clarifications, have questions or concerns, please email:
mandatory-training@concordia.ca.