Workshops dealing with training students about sexual consent a success in Trinity College

 Over the course of Trinity Freshers' Week, 400 new first year students took part in Trinity College Dublin's first workshops on sexual consent. The workshops were available for first year students coming into Trinity Hall residences.

The aim of the workshops was to create a space where students could discuss sexual consent scenarios, and learn appropriate language and phrasing, in order to feel empowered both to gain and to give consent in a sexual setting.

The workshops were introduced following a mandate by the Students' Union in the last academic year, where the Union's class representatives voted in favour of introducing the workshops for incoming Halls residents. The mandate was proposed by the Students' Union's current president, Kieran McNulty.

Feedback from the workshops was conducted, which proved to be very positive overall. Some participating students stated what worked best about their workshop was the “safe environment” where they could “participate to whatever level [they] were comfortable with”, their workshop facilitators were “friendly and approachable” at “introducing scenarios [that were] questioning norms”, and that it “established some things that [they] might have been uncertain about and [so they] understand much more”. One student wrote that what worked best about their workshops was “discussing real world scenarios and how consent should be applied in our relationships.”

The current Students' Union Welfare Officer, Aoibhinn Loughlin, worked on the project along with Padraig MacNeela, creator of SMARTconsent; Trinity Student Counselling Service, Aidan Seery, TCD Senior Tutor; and the Dublin Rape Crisis Centre.Aoibhinn, the Students’ Union Welfare Officer, said: “I am delighted that these workshops received such positive feedback from first year students in Trinity Hall. I have good faith that these students will in future feel more confident in asking for and giving both verbal and non-verbal consent, which will in turn hopefully decrease the incidences of sexual assault throughout their lives. The demand for workshops has since been very high, with students outside of first year asking for consent workshops to be available to all students in college. We are working to make this happen within our ongoing sexual consent campaign in Trinity.”