The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education reports on the Gettysburg College Sexual Misconduct Policy, which says:
Sexual Misconduct is defined as a threat of a sexual nature or deliberate physical contact of a sexual nature without the other person’s consent. Examples of such behavior include, but are not limited to, 1) deliberate or reckless threat, actual or implied; 2) physical contact of a lewd type such as brushing, touching, grabbing, pinching, patting, hugging, and kissing; 3) physical contact of a sexual nature that results in reasonable apprehension of a sexual assault or
physical harm; and 4) coerced sexual activities, including rape.All sexual interaction between any two people must be consensual. Each individual has a
responsibility to obtain consent before engaging in sexual interaction. Consent is defined as the act of willingly and verbally agreeing (for example, by stating “yes”) to engage in specific sexual conduct….
So verbal agreement is required before any “sexual interaction,” presumably including lovers (or spouses) of long standing. What’s more, if “sexual interaction” refers back to “deliberate physical contact of a sexual nature” (as it seems to), then you’d need a verbal agreement before any “touching,” “hugging,” or “kissing” that is “of a lewd type.”
The requirement of consent is of course completely proper — but the requirement of verbal agreement strikes me as vastly overbroad, given the way perfectly decent and consenting adults routinely behave.
By the way, Antioch College still has its infamous policy, which says that “Consent is defined as the act of willingly and verbally agreeing to engage in specific sexual conduct…. Consent is required each and every time there is sexual activity.” Do you verbally agree to have sex each time you have consensual sex with your spouse or lover?
By the way, the Antioch policy also says that
The SOPP is violated whenever there is an incident of non-consensual sexual conduct on the Antioch College campus, during an Antioch College sanctioned event, or between two Antioch College students regardless of location. This may include but is not limited to:
* Sexually based gestures …
* Sexually based forms of non-consensual communication, whether verbal, written, electronic, or telecommunication based …
So “non-consensual” “sexually based gestures” are prohibited. So are “sexually based forms of non-consensual communication,” which leads to the question: How can you ask someone for permission to engage in sexual activity, before you’ve gotten their consent? Wouldn’t the request, at least if it’s express enough to yield an adequate consent to the activity (remember that “All parties must have a clear and accurate understanding of the sexual activity” for the consent to take place), itself be a “sexually based form[] of non-consensual communication”? Or do you need to ask first, “Do I have your consent to clearly and accurately describe to you the sexual activity to which I will then ask you to consent?”?
There’s no doubt that nonconsensual sex is a serious problem. It’s just that these codes aren’t, it seems to me, a serious solution.