January 30, 2015
Representative Gregory Haddad (D-Mansfield) and State Senator Mae Flexer (D-Killingly) are co-sponsoring Senate Bill 636, “An Act Concerning Affirmative Consent,” which seeks to clarify school policies about what ‘consent’ is and to provide consistency state-wide. The bill would establish ‘affirmative consent’ as the threshold in sexual assault and intimate partner violence cases and provide more clarity for university disciplinary boards when proceeding with these cases.
Affirmative consent standards are already in effect at the University of Connecticut and Yale University. This bill would expand upon that practice to require that affirmative consent standards be in place at all Connecticut colleges, public and private.
“I’m proud to propose this bill with Senator Flexer. We must ensure that college students understand the absolute necessity of mutual consent,” said Rep. Haddad. “Too often, silence or a lack of outright protest is misunderstood to be consent. This bill rejects that standard and establishes a simpler, smarter and safer ‘yes means yes’ policy on Connecticut’s college campuses.”
“Every student at a college or university in Connecticut should have the same expectation of safety,” Sen. Flexer said. “A year ago, on a unanimous and bipartisan basis, Connecticut passed new campus sexual assault regulations for all state colleges and universities. That bill required colleges to offer sexual assault prevention programming that defined ‘consent’ in sexual relationships but left it up to each institution of higher education to come up with a definition. What we’re saying today is, let’s be clear, let’s be consistent, and let’s change the conversation from ‘no means no’ to ‘yes means yes’.”