Campus club makes case for consent during Bermuda Shorts Day

By Chris Adams, April 9 2015 —

The Consent Awareness and Sexual Education (CASE) club will promote healthy sexual activity before and during Bermuda Shorts Day.

The club started promoting consent at BSD last year with their Got Consent? campaign. They hung posters and banners and handed out goodie bags filled with condoms and candy.

CASE vice-president communications Claire Gjertsen said this year’s campaign took a lighter approach.

“We wanted it to be fun, positive and cheeky to have a positive association with consent and to keep with the spirit of BSD. It’s very bright, very colourful and very fun,” Gjertsen said.

CASE designed four posters with slogans including “have consent in place before you go to first base,” “ask in advance before you take off your pants” and “if they’re too drunk, don’t show your junk.”

Gjertsen said there’s already a negative feeling surrounding BSD this year, given last year’s murder of five university students in Brentwood on BSD. She hopes the campaign will “add to the positive side” of BSD and not dampen the mood.

“We felt like students may connect with it more and have it be original and not have it be associated with anything negative, trying to not have fun on BSD,” Gjertsen said. “We didn’t want to police [students]. We want to inspire them to remember consent when they’re having fun on BSD.”

The club will also hand out “swag bags” when students pick up their wristbands for BSD. The bags include condoms with the slogan “ask the cutie before you touch the booty,” custom bookmarks and candy.

CASE initially had enough funding to make around 1,500 swag bags, but they raised money to fund an additional 500. They took to the Internet and crowdsourced over $500 to pay for the extra bags.

“We did a mock-up of one of the posters and took a picture of each of the CASE execs holding the poster so they could share it on their social media. We ended up raising more than enough money,” Gjertsen said.

CASE’s banners went up in MacHall Monday night, while their poster campaign will begin a few days before BSD.