In this article, Elizabeth Mitton discusses the Western incident on an incident-specific level, considering student and administrative perspectives, including contention surrounding the language being used and students responses on social media, followed by contextualizing this incident on a societal level, discussing the prevalence of sexual violence across the campuses of various Canadian universities.

Elizabeth Mitton deconstructs the ongoing investigations into sexual violence on Western University’s campus. What happened at Western in the fall of 2021? How have police and the university administration responded? And what does this mean for campuses cross Ontario as they continue work to combat rape culture and prevent sexual violence on campus?

In this article, Abbigail Hollett unpacks some harrowing statistics around sexual and gender-based violence, before including some commentary from the Kawartha Sexual Assault Centre about how we can support survivors and work towards ending sexual violence.