Exeter Feminist Union Hosts SEXeter Forum

This past Saturday night, Exeter’s Feminist Union, or Fem Club, hosted “Let’s Talk About SEXeter,” a panel-based discussion which aimed to discuss Exeter’s sexual climate and open up the conversation around campus regarding sexual assault.

Fem club co-head and senior Alix Hunter hosted and facilitated the discussion. Past discussions surrounding sexual assault and Exeter’s sexual culture have often been limited to isolated Fem Club meetings. The panel attempted to break that barrier and invite a larger audience to flesh out problems and solutions, specifically within Exeter’s student-to-student interactions.

The panel members included seniors Emma Kim and Peter Duff and lower Maria Heeter. Additionally, health instructor Michelle Soucy, Dean of Student Health and Wellness Gordon Coole, counselor Szu-Hui Lee and History instructor Betty Luther-Hillman served as faculty representatives on the panel.  Although Hunter aimed to steer the conversation toward topics surrounding the presence of sex in Exonians’ lives, the forum spent a large portion of time discussing institutional policy change; students look to see these changes mostly within the visitations policy, which has recently been called into question.

“After the discussion, I really felt like there were people who can make a change, who can really initiate conversations for gender equality and positive sexual health.”

Many students communicated that they would be more inclined to stay in a sexually uncomfortable situation than leave the room in an illegal visitation situation, in fear of reprimand from faculty and parents.

However, faculty have voiced that the safety of students is their primary concern and that in deciding consequences for such rule violations, they are flexible in balancing the rules with what is necessary for a student’s health. During the forum, students emphasized confusion and concern over what the response would be.

In response to this confusion, faculty in the audience and on the panel aimed to communicate the notion that students’ safety would always take precedence as the most important concern. Lee said, “Students need to prioritize personal safety, self-respect and how we want to treat each other in this community over fear of what others might think or fear of getting in trouble.”

Furthermore, Lee said that clarity of the various terms and expectations within policies, as well as student conversations, are critical in having clear and direct conversations about their impacts. “It is important for the administration to clarify any misunderstandings or rumors about our rules and policies. The more clarity we have in this community about these topics, the better,” Lee said. This lack of clear communication extends to casual conversations between students, since it can potentially be the root of sexual discomfort in sexual interactions.

“It is also important for students to be clear on expectations when agreeing to spend time together,” Lee said, pushing for clarification in both student-student relationships and administrative rules. “Don’t guess, don’t assume, don’t wait and see how it goes. Ask.”

“While one person assumes that ‘Netflix and chill’ means kissing, the other party may assume it means sex,” Heeter said.

Because of the nature of Exeter’s “hook up” culture, this lack of communication is often heightened within non-committed relationships.  “Hookups are usually initiated with vague dialogue. Participants can enter a hook up situation with completely different expectations, which can lead to students being pushed outside of their sexual comfort zones,” Kim said.

“This problem could be simplified if the terms and expectations of the hookup were clearly defined by both people, but conversations like that can be difficult to initiate when both participants are not completely comfortable with one another.”

Students also discussed the peer pressure within the student body as a negative aspect of the sexual culture. Students said there is an unhealthy atmosphere of competition in “building a resume” of sexual encounters, which can urge unhealthy sexual mindsets.  “Word travels quickly on our campus, and no one wants the reputation of ‘tease’ or ‘prude.’ Students may have friends, or dorm environments, that give them the message that hooking up is cool and that everyone does it,” Kim said. “This pressure to be more sexually active than a person is comfortable with is not a healthy part of sexuality.”

Soucy described the forum as a good start to conversation on campus and was impressed with the number of people in the audience, but also said that she had “quickly learned that we were preaching to the choir.” She said that most of the people who were there cared about the issues and were willing to come up with solutions.

“The composition of the room was largely female and largely liberal, and there were [few] dissenting voices,” Duff said, sharing Soucy’s sentiments.

To address the limited scope of conversation, some students during the forum called for a universal forum in which students were required to participate. Lower Maria Heeter was one of them; she wished that the audience at SEXeter had included more people who disagreed with or were indifferent to the topics discussed. She believed that a well-run assembly or forced advisory discussions would be more successful because it would include the community as a whole in the conversation, instead of just feminists.

Soucy, who has worked as a rape counselor at colleges, also said that there has to be an organized and programmatic attempt to give students and faculty the medium to talk about sexual issues. She believed that advisory groups were a great way to start the conversation, but the fact that advisees come from the same dorm or know each other well was a disadvantage; she wants to “mix it up.”  Soucy said she saw most hope for change with peer-to-peer conversations, where students who are passionate about the issue advocate for change across all wavelengths of the community.

“I loved the idea of the ambassadors, the people who facilitate the conversations with unlikely allies,” Soucy said. “After the discussion, I really felt like there were people who can make a change, who can really initiate conversations for gender equality and positive sexual health.”