Building a Consent Culture: Utilization of National SEED Project Methodology in Social Work Practice

The variety and continuation of stories unfolding across sectors and industries confirms the pervasiveness of gender based, family, and community violence. Higher education has had far too many confrontations with harassment, assault, and the cultural and structural forces that underlie them. According to Rosenthal, Smidt, and Freyd (2016), 38% of female graduate students self-reported that they have experience sexual harassment from staff or faculty. In some disciplines, women have described the culture as corrosive and hostile. Ten percent of female graduate students at research universities have reported sexual harassment by a faculty member (Cantalupo & Kidder, 2018). Campus officials must consider how to punish abusive employees and to circumvent passing them onto another university (Gluckman, Rad, Mangan, & Quilantan, 2017). In addition, the #metoo and #ustoo movements could have a longstanding impact on higher education. As a result, faculty members could play a pivotal role in changing norms that shape the likelihood of gender-based, family, and community violence. This roundtable will be facilitated by SEED (Seeking Educational Equity and Diversity) leaders trained by The National SEED Project who will engage the audience in an interactive experience for self-reflection and interpersonal dialogue to build capacity for creating / influencing more equitable curriculum, campuses, workplaces, and communities. SEED's unique methodology involves reflection on the lessons learned from storytelling about our lived experiences, privilege, empowerment, as a means of exacting a means and commitment to change. This introspective approach will address the conference theme of gender-based, family, and community violence as it relates building a culture of consent using the curriculum of windows and mirrors (Style, 1996). The session objectives will include: · increase awareness about sexual harassment · define a "culture of consent" · understand ways of creating a culture of consent · practice the ways of engaging in a consent culture; considering the effects of emotional, psychological, cognitive, verbal, and physical contact

The SEED leaders will engage the audience in the following questions: 1) What do we learn from empathetic listening and sharing our stories? 2) How can we recognize and validate the data and scholarship gathered through our experiences? 3) How does learning in this capacity allow us to think more critically about the impact of our actions and choices? 4) How can we learn from seeing our experiences reflected in the experiences of others? How do we learn and discover things that we did not know or understand through others? 5) How can we contextualize the historical, systemic, and institutional dynamics of power, privilege, and oppression in our research?

During the ninety-minute session, the following methods will facilitate the discussion: pair share, affinity groups, journaling, and experiential circles based on the SEED methodology. SEED leaders will facilitate a structured session to create a brave space to engage in a critical conversation about the topic.