New student orientation play returns with U Need FRIES With That
By Kimberly Taylor, August 27 2024—
This year new student orientation will include a play – U Need FRIES With That – focused on common situations students transitioning to university will encounter and educating them on where to find support and help as well as navigating consent in community. During COVID the orientation play was suspended. The Office of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence worked with Quality Money to bring the play back and focus it on themes around sexual and gender based violence.
In an interview with the Gauntlet, Meg Martin – manager of sexual and gender-based violence prevention and response with the Office of Sexual and Gender-Based Violence – spoke about how the play is responsive to current student needs.
“The themes and the issues that we’re highlighting for this year in the play are things that came up in the post secondary survey that was done around sexual and gender-based violence. So, things like cyber stalking or internet based harassment. It’s data-driven in that way. We’ll adjust it every year.”
Martin also highlighted that the play was written by a Masters of Fine Arts student Maxim Vinogradov — who also spoke with the Gauntlet — and is acted by student actors. All of the students participating in the play will be paid for their work through the Students’ Union Quality Money program.
“It is students acting, it’s students producing it, it’s students directing and those students are being compensated fairly,” Said Martin. “If we’re doing a play that draws on some of their expertise and their lived experiences and pieces of their identity,… it’s really important that people be compensated for their work and their artistry. So that’s something that the Students’ Union was really concerned with and that we’re really aligned with as well.”
Martin shared that FRIES in the title of the play is an acronym related to consent.
“The F is freely given, the R is reversible, the I is informed and the E is engaged and the S in FRIES stands for specific.”
However, both Martin and Vinogradov emphasized that the play goes beyond educating around consent and includes building community, how to deal with mistakes and where to go for help.
“[The play] acknowledges that there are some challenges when you’re navigating consent with somebody that you already know and that you might be in community with. It’s also meant to model some skills around building more inclusive communities. We’ve got pieces around misgendering, use of pronouns, how to respect people’s identities, and how to navigate things when you mess up. [Or] if you approach somebody and you get rejected,” said Martin.
“Anybody who even questions the idea of going to the SU offices, the seal is broken. It’s been brought up. I might as well go, no one’s going to find out. I’m not weird. It’s just an easy thing to do…It’s also a play for somebody who might accidentally perpetrate some kind of harm,” said Vinogradov.
Vinogradov shared that one of the goals of the play is to normalize some of the situations students may be dealing with in addition to directing them to where to get help.
“The goal is less to cure anybody who’s dealing with sexual assault issues or childhood issues, substance use issues, and more to just tell them where the doctor lives and show [in the play a] student who’s also in that situation [and what to do]. You just go to this person who can give you really great resources that your tuition is already paying for,” said Vinogradov. “I think everybody who goes through university will run into at least one or two things that are just really, really rough. And I would love for someone who is experiencing that to know that getting help is appropriate.”
The play is limited to pre-registered students, but Martin hopes that in the future it can be offered to more people.
“Unfortunately, we don’t have much room. We can’t actually have all of the incoming orientation students currently attend, there are only 1500 spots. But we’re hoping after the two year pilot program with Quality Money that this is something that we can make a case to be included in [the] future on an ongoing basis, and to be rolled out to the community more broadly,” said Martin.
“It’s a really worthwhile investment by institutions to try and do educational programming that is larger scale, that involves students, that is driven by students, that speaks directly to students from students. And that is innovative, that is something other than a workshop.”
New students who have pre-registered will be able to watch the play on Thursday, Aug. 30 in the University Theatre.