University That Made Sex Assault Survivors Stay Quiet Now Accused of Plagiarizing New Policy

The Manitoba university that was exposed Tuesday for forcing a gag order upon complaintants of sexual assault has now been accused of hastily introducing new sexual assault guidelines by borrowing them from another university. Brandon University, which killed its controversial "behavioural contract" yesterday (after coming under fire for pressuring sex assault complainants to stay silent or face possible expulsion), introduced their official sexual assault task force policy today. However, in documents obtained by VICE, the new policy's wording is a near word-for-word match of Queen's University's task force on sexual assault, introduced in April 2015.

Both policies call for a "central, visible, and welcoming 'Sexual Assault Response and Prevention (SARP) Centre'" and an overhaul to the number of resources and support systems for survivors of sexual assault on campus. Filed under six "objective" categories, every single one of the points proposed by Brandon University are almost exactly the same as Queen's University's' own policy.

For example, under the third point of the first task force category, Queen's University's policy asks "[t]he university significantly raises the profile of all sexual assault support services and resources among the student population as well as the community broadly." The same line appears word-for-word in the Brandon University document—an occurrence that happens dozens of times between the two pieces of policy.

Brandon University's doc has no names attached to it and only three footnotes. None attribute Queen's University as a source.

The administration, when asked by VICE about the striking similarities between the two documents, did not immediately comment. Queen's University was also not immediately available for comment.

A professor at the Brandon University, who chose not to be identified, called it a "deplorable" example of plagiarism.

"It is like the university forgot everyone else has the power of Google," they told VICE.

Stefon Irvine, chairperson of the LGBTTQ Collective and spokesperson for the We Believe Survivors chapter on campus, said they were made aware of the possible plagiarism shortly after the policy was made public last night. Irvine called it "disgusting" that the university would go against its own policy on copying with attribution.

"For the university to turn around and not practice what they preach and plagiarize just goes to show that they felt like they had to respond to the demands, but that they weren't prepared, they weren't ready," he told VICE.

"Their recommendations weren't well rounded enough and now they had to go and copy off Queen's University. I think this was part of the communications [department's] plan to sweep the issue under the rug again."

Irvine and We Believe Survivors put forward a series of recommendations to the university Wednesday evening. The recommendations include but are not limited to: an immediate apology to survivors of sexual assault on campus, a rebuilding of the reporting system, sexual violence training for counselors, and to release the complete number of sexual assaults reported to the university.

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