by Erica Scoville, Senior Reporter

Mandi Gray recently visited Thorneloe University to host a discussion surrounding sexual violence on campuses while in Sudbury premiering a documentary directed by Kelly Showker, Slut or Nut: The Diary of a Rape Trial. This film follows Gray as she navigates the legal system after a sexual assault. The film examines what it is like to report rape and different options for survivors.

Gray shared how filmmaking has served as means to help heal from the trauma of her sexual assault.

“Creating this film has been so therapeutic” Gray said. “I never thought I was a creative or artistic person until coming into this space. [It has] profoundly shaped and changed my entire life. I feel like that’s where most of my hope comes from.”

Gray has been named a Toronto hero by NOW Magazine in 2016. She is an activist, a speaker, an emerging sociologist. She is published in academic journals involving studies in social justice and is best known for her work on sexual violence and is cofounder of the group, Silence is Violence, a survivor led group seeking to challenge institutional silencing of sexual assault on campus.

Gray explained what prompted her to begin this activism both in the film as well as her campus discussion, which was being sexually assaulted by a colleague at York University and the many barriers she faced at many institutional levels once she decided to report her assault.

“This happened at a time where Jian Ghomeshi had just been charged with sexual assault and had lost his job at CBC” she said.

“[There were] all of these people in the media saying, ‘Report! There’s no victim blaming, there’s no slut shaming,’ [it was like] this message was everywhere.”

“I was told that on my campus there were all these services that exist if you are ready to report and so when it happened to me I had this idea that there were these services that existed, and that the cops would believe me, [but] that mainstream narrative was in direct contrast to what I experienced.”

“There is a culture of silencing that exists within these institutions that perpetuates misogyny and sexual violence” Gray said.

Gray also discussed ‘Institutional betrayal’, a term coined by American psychologist, Jennifer Freyd, and its relevancy to sexual assault on campuses.

“I think it’s so relevant to the harm that is done to us by the institutions, in my experience anyways, of being violated. It’s the hypocrisy of walking onto campus and seeing ‘Consent is sexy!’ or ‘We believe survivors!’ and then you call [their] phone lines and no one picks up, and no one returns my phone calls..”

“It’s that hypocrisy of where an institution that you truly believe is there to protect you is telling you one thing and then doing another” she said.

Also discussed, was the inaccessibility of some campus resources amongst Canadian universities and a general lack of knowledge surrounding one’s ability to access them.

“My colleague and I did do our own survey research about students’ knowledge of resources on campus at York [University]” Gray said.

“We did a survey of about 600 students and it very was telling in who felt that they could access services on campus. A statistically significant portion of black women felt that they could not access services on campus. There are considerations to take into account when talking about services and service provisioning, who is actually accessing them, and who has knowledge on [the services].”

During this discussion, the question posed was, where do we go from here?

Women’s, Gender, and Sexualities studies student, Bethany Simonson, shared one way to create a safer environment on our own campus.

“Just in terms of rape culture on campus, while I don’t necessarily hear, not that it’s always disclosed, of too much rape on campus, I do hear a lot of very dangerous things in terms of stuff that could lead to rape, if you think about the continuum of violence” Simonson sad.

“So what are we supposed to do as students?”

“I think one thing that could be done is if a friend says something sexist or transphobic or whatnot, if you feel comfortable, call them out. Don’t think that that’s not a worthy thing to call out— it is needed. Those simple acts are needed. And if you can change the discussion that is happening on campus surrounding rape and rape culture, that is something that is important.”

To learn more about on-campus as well as off-campus services for sexual assault survivors visit laurentian.ca/equity-diversity-and-human-rights.