Where did you learn about sexual consent? How do you understand it?

These were two of the questions I asked students at Graham House, a men’s residence at Rhodes University, as we did an exercise on putting things in the #ConsentBox and throwing out other things.

I had been invited to the university in 2016 by a woman and a man (which is important to note), Babalwa and Sbu, to give a series of presentations and to talk with students.

Sounds elementary.

At some point we get taught about sexual consent. And then we build on that for ourselves.

I had anticipated, from a combination of extant literature and experience, that most students at that university had never had any explicit dialogue on sexual consent. Had never been taught about what is and what isn’t sexual consent. I am afraid I wasn’t proven wrong.

I never got an education on sexual consent at university. But that was in the 1980s. I also never got it at home. Or at school.

I do not think many universities had courses on sexuality, let alone on sexual consent, when I was a student. You could say I went to university at a different time, that things have changed. You would be mistaken. As far as I know, few universities today, in the twenty-first century, have a systematic and consistent education programme for their students on the ins and outs of sexual consent. The lack of sexual consent education is not confined to Rhodes University.

The dialogue with students at Graham House left me convinced that intensive, ongoing, expert and, to be sure, sociopolitical education campaigns on sexual consent at universities are long overdue. One student at the residence said this was the first time they had had any such dialogue, and, he went on, it is too late to change what young men like him understand about sexual consent. He was earnest, and angry, and sad, almost in despair. This student was not from a township school. His point was that this is a dialogue he had needed much earlier in his life, in Grade 7 at the latest. I think so too.