Content Warning: Article discusses sexual assault and violence.
Campus safety is a constant concern for students, especially now with the growing number of assaults and attacks on university and college campuses. The University of Toronto aims at making campus a comfortable home for learning, working, and living. UofT provides several services to accompany students on campus in uncomfortable or dangerous situations.
Campus Police work in partnership with many programs to create a safe space for students. They can be reached at 416-978-2323 for general information and at 416-978-2222 for urgent situations. Many large, red emergency stations are located around campus where students can press a button to signal for help; a member of the Campus Police will be sent immediately to the location.
The Work Alone Program allows individuals who are on campus at quiet periods (evenings, weekends, holidays) to arrange for a member of the Campus Police to escort them from work and to check in during work hours. This service can be reached at the Campus Police general information phone number.
WalkSmart is a service that provides escorts to students who feel uncomfortable walking alone anywhere on campus. Escorts are available all year round at any given time. Students must call 416-978-SAFE (7233) to schedule a time for a patroller to escort them from location A to B. These escorts are recognizable by black ID cards and blue jackets marked “Campus Patrol WalkSmart.” To maximize levels of comfort, WalkSmart sends out one female and one male escort to accompany a student at the time of their request. The service is regularly used by first-year students within their first six months at the university, before friendships and bonds have formed.
Assault that occurs on campus, specifically sexual assault, is mostly against women. However, students of any gender can be victimized. Sexual assault on campus is a growing issue for universities, but this issue continues to go unrecognized as a threat. The University of Toronto makes reporting sexual assault very difficult and tiring—especially for dealing with the sensitive subject at hand. These traumatic situations have left victims too afraid and embarrassed to return to classes or campus, since the attacker is often someone the victim knows.
Over the summer of 2015, VUSAC worked with small focus groups to reinvent the existing sexual assault policy to make it more direct. The final product of this effort has yet to be presented to the student body.
Since October 2015, Kelly Hannah-Moffat was appointed Vice-President to Human Resources and Equity, on Sexual Violence and Crisis Services. Hannah-Moffatt had recommended changing the existing structure of the sexual violence services.
UofT President Meric Gertler and Vice President and Provost Cheryl Regehr have both commented on their commitment to maintaining the university as a comfortable place for students and reviewing the existing procedures to ensure they provide appropriate resources for sexual harassment relief and support.
In an article published by UofT News, Regehr is quoted as saying, “As we develop our response to the review, we encourage all members of the university community to continue to offer their comments. We are confident that the recommendations in the report will help us continue to improve the university’s prevention and response efforts related to sexual violence.” Gertler and Regehr created a committee to focus on this issue where consultations with students were held that worked with external groups such as the Peel Assault Centre.
In an article published by CBC on February 16, fourteen days after UofT News published their article about the university’s efforts to restructure their system to support the victims, an anonymous student who was victim to an assault states that the university left her with little help. CBC states, “The student had a meeting with a representative from the university’s counselling services during the last school year, but instead of getting help, she says, she left ‘blaming’ herself.”
The university supplies several services to who are in emergency situations or are looking to take preventative measures. UofT, like many other North American universities, still requires many large steps forward in order to fully support victims of assault on-campus.
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