Manifesto

We, the Women and Gender Studies Senior Colloquium Class of 2023 manifest a space for University of Colorado Boulder students to feel noticed and cared for by our administration. As students, feminists, and people we see opportunities on our campus for significant change. We refuse to sit idle when the university consistently fails to acknowledge sexual violence and rape culture both on and off campus. We believe that there are steps that the University can take to be an agent in ending this culture—this does not have to be the reality of students' lives. The University of Colorado Boulder has a long history of neglecting survivors and letting perpetrators go without repercussions. We, the Cottage Killjoys, are tired of CU institutions invisiblizing victims and celebrating perpetrators. One would think that given CU’s history, CU would refrain from allowing sexual abusers to enroll in classes, join organizations, and participate in sports, all of which demonstrate a prioritization of reputation and money over student safety. Make no mistake, CU deliberately ignores the harm they inflict on their students in favor of the profits that come from division one sports and Greek life. As students who pay exorbitant amounts of tuition money, future students deserve a safe place to learn. We need justice for survivors and appropriate reprocussions for perpetrators. Dismantling rape culture is no easy task, but it starts with us—it starts with you. Further, CU must implement programs educating students on sexual assault and prevention. It is not enough to address the problem after it has occurred, preventative steps need to be taken; let us place responsibility on perpetrators and not survivors. Our list of demands details the steps that should be taken to create a more positive campus culture for students today and tomorrow. As a colloquium we have spent the semester imagining what a better future might look like here at Boulder and we hope that this transfers over to our administration. So, before we move on to our list of demands, we would like to acknowledge the space we have been given to manifest feminist abolitionist modes of thought. As Leanne Betasamosake Simpson says in her book As We Have Always Done, Western education is structured as follows: “We learn how to type and how to write. We learn how to think within the confines of Western thought. We learn how to pass tests and get jobs within the city of capitalism. If we're lucky and we fall into the right programs, we might learn to think critically about colonialism.” We walk across this stage today having fallen into the right programs; it is our hope that more people start falling alongside us.

List of Demands

1. We demand that all freshman students at CU Boulder must attend a sexual assault orientation, in person. This orientation must be focused on educating men to not engage in predatory behavior and to hold peers accountable, rather than preventative measures that are aimed at potential victims.
2. We demand that a sexual assault and bystander intervention training be required each year of college, particularly one that concept-builds off of the last training, NOT identically repeating the same trainings.
3. We demand that ALL allegations of sexual assault are taken seriously, and followed through to the end, promptly, by administrators and law enforcement agencies.
4. We demand more in depth investigations of prospective students to ensure that any persons with any history of sexual assault cannot be enrolled in the University of Colorado Boulder.
5. We demand an emphasis on action, consequences, and restorative justice for offenders of sexual violence.
6. We demand that the CU Alert systems identify sexual assault patterns within communities that are near the universities, and to notify people in a timely manner, REGARDLESS of jurisdiction, for the purpose of keeping students, a targeted population, aware and safe while they are on campus OR in the community. Especially focusing on incidents that occur within Greek Life.
7. We demand that the university works with the Interfraternal Council (IFC) in order to hold fraternities accountable for sexual assault, drugging, and other allegations, rather than ignorance of the largest population of perpetrators. We would like to see action over simple surveillance of the organization.
8. We demand there is stronger communication to the students on the participation in the Campus Culture Survey to gather more accurate information of the sexual misconduct on campus.
9. We demand that any release of sexual misconduct statistics includes an acknowledgement of the mass underreporting of sexual misconduct and why people are deterred from reporting these instances.