by Maria Vittoria Borghi
Illustrated by Mithalina Taib
It was the beginning of September, and I was slouching on the sofa when I had my first contact with ConsentEd. My phone lit up, showing me an Outlook notification welcoming me to LSE, and I found a timid invitation to sign up for the course between the “Student Hub” and the ‘Welcome events and updates’ sections. Its wording is assertive, but visually, ConsentEd looks almost afraid to claim its space among the announcements.
For those who don’t know, the ConsentEd program was launched in 2021 by our Student Union (LSESU). The aim is to raise awareness of strategies to recognise and prevent sexual misconduct, as well as encourage self-reflection on different norms that influence perceptions of consent. With these goals in mind, the SU designed an interactive online course and recruited students to host 90-minute in-person sessions on the topic, taking place at the beginning of the Michaelmas term every year. LSE has backed ConsentEd financially: for example, the students leading the workshops, whom are referred to as facilitators, are trained with LSE funds and receive a salary of approximately £12.40 per hour.
The first thing I noticed during the online training was that there’s a survivor-only workshop designed for those who might find the content upsetting or triggering, as well as an opt-out option for the in-person session – both of which I find very thoughtful. I could tell that behind ConsentEd, there’s a team who put a lot of time and effort into its production and curation: there is a good balance between the interactive elements, which make the experience fun and engaging, and the written content, which was short and to the point. I also appreciated the sections on the current UK legislation around sexual consent, because it’s easy to forget how important the legal framework of your country of residence is until it isn’t.
For all its strengths, I couldn’t help but wonder if anyone took the time to do the online course. All its sections have a very visible ‘next’-button that allows you to move onto the next part(s) without interacting with the screen, and by clicking on the navigation bar, one can skip a good number of units altogether. It’s a pity to put this much effort into (online) ConsentEd only to include a feature that ensures anyone and everyone can go through the whole course without looking at the screen.
I found myself surprised and proud to be part of an institution that invests into sensitizing on this topic and asked people around me what they thought about the online course of the program. Interestingly, many male postgrads didn’t know what I was talking about. And sadly, those who did know hadn’t done the course yet. Although my findings aren’t representative of the postgraduate cohort, I found it disheartening that so many people cannot make the time to get behind ConsentEd. While I understand that studying at LSE is demanding, why is this the one thing at the bottom of our priority list? It seems like we expect change but refuse to be an integral part of it.
I initially thought the lack of participation was merely a visibility issue. As one of my friends put it: ‘Why did I get at least ten different emails from LSE about class representatives, free yoga lessons, and inclusion commitments, and not even one exclusively on ConsentEd?’ But I was wrong.
My department had 27 sign-ups for the in-person session and 21 no-shows. There were eight people present (including the facilitators), and realistically, at least one or two of the participants probably thought attendance was compulsory. I get it; we’re all busy. But if we – the presumably open-minded and well-educated citizens of the world – don’t make time to engage in these conversations, who else will?
The question of showing up to ConsentEd has been an ongoing topic between my friends and I. Obviously, going to these sessions doesn’t necessarily mean that you were a victim of abuse, nor that you have a “problem” with consent. It’s mainly about getting everyone on the same page: our differing backgrounds can make the LSE experience so unique and rewarding, but are also something to take into account in daily interactions. For example, while cheek kissing is a very common way to greet people in my country, in other places it’s considered an intrusion of personal space even among close friends. Under these circumstances, everyone benefits from a ConsentEd session.
Of course, students are only one part of the equation. A quick Google search will tell you that our community had cases of sexual misconduct where the victims turned to LSE and received insufficient support (e.g., Ella Holmes and Charlotte). This is by no means our institution’s finest hour. While acknowledging that the generous funding from LSE and the hiring of an anti-harassment officer represents a huge improvement of our institution’s support network, money can ultimately only do so much.
Given LSE’s internationally recognized expertise in media and communications, it’s not a lack of knowledge that’s keeping it from improving its messaging on ConsentEd. In fact, if it wasn’t for Annaëlle Thoreau, LSESU’s Community & Welfare Officer, actively reaching out to every department to offer postgraduates sessions, I wonder if I would have even gotten wind of ConsentEd. Frankly, I cannot make much sense of LSE’s disinterest in involving postgraduates in ConsentEd, considering that we outnumber undergraduates. As I mentioned earlier, LSE is against mandatory ConsentEd for postgraduate students, resulting in wording that leaves the importance of attendance ambiguous. Without exception, all materials include the following sentence: ‘all students are expected to complete the online training course and the in-person seminar.’
My department (Media and Communications) is one of the six who took Annaëlle up on her offer. Indeed, she confirmed that out of 25 LSE postgraduate departments, 19 decided against offering a consent workshop to their postgraduate students at no personal cost. Maybe not actively, sometimes emails just get overlooked – Annaëlle was the first to point out that she reached out at a very busy time for departments. However, the LSESU will never get enough funds for a session per department if most of them don’t express interest in having one.
Despite everything, it’s important to remember that there is no villain in this story. ConsentEd might’ve been created by LSE students for LSE, but it’s also the other way around. It’s the hard-fought result of the effort of negotiations between student activists and the LSE. We must remember it wasn’t born by chance but out of necessity, and address this lack of interest on both sides.
One of the first facilitators I talked to summed up the problem as ‘a communications issue’, and I couldn’t agree more. Promoting ConsentEd and a safe campus culture is a shared responsibility between the LSE, its students and the SU – at present, only the latter is holding up their end of the bargain. Between students and faculties, many of us represent today’s and tomorrow’s policymakers, economists, managers and lawyers. But this isn’t just about our professions. As classmates, friends, siblings and parents: what kind of message are we all sending?
