Can I kiss you? Can I give you a hug? Can I touch you? Yes! Consent happens when all parties agree on a sexual activity. But, consent is more than just sex. Consent happens everywhere, all the time, every day.
September 16-20 was consent awareness week. There are many resources on campus to learn about consent and receive help for circumstances of sexual discrimination, harassment or assault. If a case were to arise, SF State students can reach out to the Title IX office and The SAFE Place: resources on campus that provide students with assistance during cases of sexual assault and harassment.
For information about consent and sexual health resources, students can go to Health Promotion and Wellness, Education and Referral Organization for Sexuality (EROS) and the Women’s Center. These organizations on campus refer students who need someone to talk to about relationships, sex, mental health, etc. These organizations are referral programs, meaning they can refer you to professional assistance.
What is Consent?
According to Health Promotion and Wellness, consent is an affirmative and unambiguous “yes.” It is an agreement between both parties before engaging in any sexual activity.
Partners can change their mind at any given time if they want to stop an activity. Consent cannot be given if one person is asleep or unconscious.
Title IX
Once a year, students are required by the California State University system to take a sexual harassment course called San Francisco State Title IX Impressions. The training is a mix of informative slides about consent, sexual harassment and reporting a Title IX action.
“Someone who is in a dating relationship with someone, the idea of ongoing consent and blanket consent is not something that should be inferred through a prior social relationship,” Anna Titus, the assistant vice president for Title IX and Discrimination Harassment Retaliation (DHR), said about student relationships on campus. “The idea that a student is engaging in sexual activity with another, that consent conversation should be ongoing and is not transactional.”
According to Titus, consent to one sexual activity, such as foreplay, cannot carry over as consent to another sexual act, such as penetrative sex.
“Consent awareness is very important on campus, as the university is able to create the living, learning, educational, working environment that we all want to be a part of,” Titus said. “Affirmative consent and consent education is really important to hold each other accountable to what university expectations are.”
Titus began working at the Title IX office in July. She previously worked at the University of South Carolina, where she was the director of investigations and resolutions. There, she supervised all civil rights related resolutions, including discrimination and sexual harassment.
The Title IX office is located in the Student Services Building Room 403 and is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Health Promotion Wellness
Health Promotion Wellness, or HPW, is located at Village at Centennial Square. Students can come in to receive safer sex supplies such as condom kits, dental dams and lube.
Taylor Davies is the sexual health coordinator at HPW. She runs two workshops for students about sex and relationships: one on boundaries and the other on sexual communication. While she is a mandated reporter and would have to report cases of sexual harassment or assault to the Title IX office, students come to her after workshops for relationship advice. Davies has a background in working with domestic violence prevention but now prefers to inform students on sexual health.
Davies uses the F.R.I.E.S acronym in her workshops.
According to Planned Parenthood, F.R.I.E.S. stands for freely given, reversible, informed, enthusiastic and specific.
Freely given means consent is a choice made without pressure, uncertainty, manipulation and the use of alcohol or drugs. Reversible means anyone can change their mind at any given time, no matter the situation. Informed means someone can only consent to something with full context. All sexual acts need to be fully discussed. Enthusiastic means giving an energetic and excited “yes” rather than a “yeah sure.” Lastly, specific means communicating with your partner about what is agreed upon. Saying yes to one thing does not mean saying yes to multiple.
“The idea is to provide students with the tools to open the conversation with their partners about being explicit when you talk about sex,” Davies said. Consent is more than just a “yes” to her, it is consistently checking in and communicating with the other person.
“I think a lot of the time people think of consent as an individual agreement, but when you’re in the moment, you’re sharing it with whoever that person is,” Davies said. “You’re both making that exchange.”
SAFE Place
The SAFE Place, located in Student Services Room 205, provides free and confidential counseling services to victims of sexual assault, intimate partner violence, stalking and sexual harrassment. The program works directly with San Fransciso Women Against Rape.
SFWAR was founded in 1973. It supports survivors of sexual assault with information and counseling resources. People can also sign up to volunteer for the program as well.
Nour Loren is the manager of The SAFE Place. Previously, she had collaborated with EROS at their events in past semesters. During consent awareness week, The SAFE Place provided its resources to students through tabling.
“Specifically in the work that I do, it [consent] is necessary for all types of interactions — romantic, sexual, platonic — whatever the case may be,” Loren said. “It’s really just the foundation of a healthy communication practice between two people and negotiating where the boundaries are in those relationship dynamics.”
EROS (Education and Referral Organization for Sexuality)
During consent awareness week, EROS put together a three-day series of events to explain the importance of consent to S.F. State students. Students also learned about sexual assault prevention, healthy relationships and sexual communication. They also had access to a resource fair. The events were put together by Camila Hernández, the director of EROS.
The EROS office is located on the terrace floor of Cesar Chavez Student Center. Similar to HPW, the organization offers safer sex supplies such as condoms and lube. Students can check out informational books on sex and relationships and also rent pornographic DVDs, which is exclusively a part of EROS resources. According to the EROS website, the program’s mission is to inform students about sexuality and gender.
“I believe in enthusiastic consent,” Hernández said. “That’s like, ‘yes I really want to do it’ because it’s not just ‘no means no.’ There’s also ‘yes means yes’ so if someone wants to do it [sex], they are really adamant about doing it.”
Monica Perry worked on the EROS staff last semester, but still hangs out in the EROS office once and a while. Perry, a visual communication design major, believes consent informs our daily lives and relationships.
“I think it can sometimes be the defining line between having a good relationship with someone and completely disrespecting someone,” Perry said.
Women’s Center
The Women’s Center is located on the terrace level of Cesar Chavez Student Center. The center offers resources for students facing sexual assault, domestic violence and even housing insecurity. Their office is designated as a safe place for all students. They offer free pads, tampons and pregnancy tests to students as well.
MJ Parafina and Madeline Cox, the director and the assistant director of the Women’s Center, respectively, want students to know that consent is essential. They believe the Women’s Center is a safe space for all that enter.
“Consent is important to us at the Women’s Center because a lot of people have trouble speaking up for themselves,” said Parafina. “I feel like we try our best to give them that power and emphasize empowerment in standing up for yourself.”
Parafina pointed out that a lot of people on a college campus are just now figuring out their sex lives — what they like and what they don’t like.
“The best thing we can do here [Women’s Center] is provide them with resources and hold events where they can have a space to learn these things and open up about what they might be going through,” Parafina said.
If a student has an issue, they can go to the Women’s Center and be referred to Title IX or The SAFE Place, where a report will be made. The center also collaborates with off-campus organizations such as SFWAR, Black Woman Revolt and La Casa de las Madres.
Black Woman Revolt’s mission is to increase awareness of intergenerational violence amongst the Black community. La Casa de las Madres is an organization that responds to calls of domestic assault and helps victims and survivors. If a problem were to arise on campus, Parafina and Cox would refer the student to talk to La Casa de las Madres and Black Woman Revolt, while also referring them to The SAFE Place and the Title IX office.
“Students that need our help, the advice I would give them is to not feel ashamed in any way about what they experienced,” said Cox. “Don’t feel embarrassed about coming forward or think that whatever issue they’ve experienced isn’t worthy of getting help.”
Students at S.F State have a plethora of resources available to them, but they also have student leaders that will provide a safe space to share feelings or report sexual misconduct.
