Nearly 49 percent of California State University, Long beach students still need to complete the mandatory sexual assault “Not Any More” training program, Title IX Coordinator Larisa Hamada said.
A deadline to complete the training has yet to be confirmed, but students can expect it somewhere between the end of February and the beginning of March. Title IX Coordinator Larisa Hamada said she recommends that students do it before the end of February.
The department of Equity and Diversity will send students a courtesy email informing them of the upcoming deadline and the steps to complete the video weeks prior to the deadline.
“We have to demonstrate that we’ve indeed met every student, we actually are requiring our students to do it,” Hamada said. “Registration holds will be placed on students’ accounts, so they wouldn’t be able to register.”
Once a registration hold has been placed, students must wait a full business day after watching the video before the hold is lifted, Hamada said.
She said that starting this fall, all incoming students will have to watch the video. Hamada also said that returning students will also have to complete annual trainings. The program is mandated as part of the Violence Against Women Act and the Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act, which was adopted in March 2014.
According to the whitehouse.gov factsheet, both acts seek to address the violence women face on college campuses by investigation and prosecution. The acts also require that all students take some type of training pertaining to violence awareness.
The university is tracking video completions through custom built training accounts that are assigned specifically to each student, Hamada said. Student Success hosts the video and sending the completions back to the department of Equity and Diversity.
The video is accessible on laptops, smartphones and tablets. It takes approximately 40 minutes to watch and is composed of a series of testimonies and definitions.
“We’re finding that a lot of students don’t understand what consent means,” Hamada said. “We talk about consent because students need to know what their rights are and they also need to know what is and is not appropriate.”
Hamada said “Not Any More” stresses that consent needs to happen every step of the way, not just the beginning. Sexual assault doesn’t just cover rape, it covers everything that would count as sexual violence including stalking, domestic and dating violence.
The university offers a variety of resources for students who have experienced any form of sexual assault through the department of Equity and Diversity, Hamada said.
“Whatever the school is showing the students, that’s how the students are going to act,” Lisa Vazquez, a junior accounting-major said. “If the school shows that this is important, then the students themselves will find it important.”
The CSU chancellor’s office issued the new procedures. All 23 CSUs follow the same procedures and have the same definitions and legal thresholds, Hamada said. Complaints involving both students and university employees can be filed through the department of Equity and Diversity and are confidential.
“Awareness needs to be spread,” Jacob Tighe, a sophomore computer-engineering major said. “Hopefully [after watching the video] people will respect other people’s personal choices when it comes to sex.”