On January 15, the University Affairs Board (UAB) held a meeting where members discussed U of T’s Sexual Violence Policy review launch and debated the collected data’s usability on student mental health services.
U of T’s Sexual Violence Policy review
Vice-Provost, Students Sandy Welsh began the meeting by informing the board about the launch of the university’s Sexual Violence Policy review, which is set to be completed in 2025. In 2016, the Ontario government passed legislation requiring all postsecondary institutions to review their sexual violence policies every three years.
Welsh told the members that the university had already updated students about the review through Quercus and that they also plan to send the same update to U of T’s five student unions.
“We are taking a multi-faceted approach to gather internal feedback from all of our stakeholders, as well as external expert feedback for the internal component of the review,” said Welsh.
In 2022, the university completed its most recent review of the Sexual Violence Policy. Since then, the document has sparked debate among student groups, like the Prevention, Empowerment, Advocacy, Response, for Survivors Project (PEARS) Project — a grassroots, trauma-informed coalition that provides support and resources to survivors of sexual violence across U of T.
PEARS claimed that the 2022 review process wasn’t survivor-centric or accessible. “We cannot wait another three years before survivors see change,” wrote PEARS in their analysis of the review.
In November 2024, PEARS voiced its concerns again by issuing a letter to the university, criticizing U of T’s 2022 review team and the lack of an external reviewer of the policy.
At the UAB meeting, Welsh announced that the university has recruited Gillian Hnatiw as an external reviewer. Hnatiw is a Toronto-based lawyer and practitioner in the areas of sexual assault, harassment, and violence.
“Ms. Hnatiw will review the policy and assess whether there are aspects of the policy that we should consider improving, updating, or changing,” explained Welsh.
Updates on students’ mental health
Christina Bartha — senior executive director, student mental health systems, policy and strategy — presented updates on student mental health support at U of T. Bartha’s report covered updates of the last four fiscal years.
According to Bartha, mental health support access at U of T has improved in the last four years, while the demand has also increased. Over the past year, the number of mental health visits to health centres across all three college campuses has grown by six per cent, from 44,838 visits in the 2022–2023 fiscal year to 47,581 in 2023–2024.
Bartha also addressed the issue of wait times across the tri-campus health centres. Students pointed out this problem during U of T’s bi-annual Student Experience Student Perception of Mental Health Care Survey, conducted in November 2022. As a result of the survey, two new services were introduced at U of T: Navi and the Telus Health Support
First, Bartha presented statistics collected by Navi — an anonymous virtual assistant that helps find mental health resources on campus, off campus, and online. Navi is a chatbot that can provide information on admissions, financial aid, careers, convocation, and especially mental health resources.
The number of conversations over the chat concerning mental health rose by 32 per cent, from 6,595 conversations a year in 2022–2023 to 9,119 conversations in 2023–2024. From the 2021–2022 to 2022–2023 academic years, the overall conversations declined by almost eight per cent.
Then, Bartha discussed the U of T Telus Health Student Support (THSS), which provides real-time and appointment-based mental health support for students. Even though she included THSS as one of the key initiatives that “are evidence of the commitment of the university to move [mental health] services forward.”
However, this specific service hasn’t been popular among students in the last four years. According to the report, the number of counselling sessions through the THSS has decreased by 30.5 per cent since its introduction in 2021. Bartha claimed that in the 2024–2025 fiscal year, the use of the THSS is increasing among students. However, she didn’t provide any data to support this claim.
Finally, Bartha mentioned the single-session or short-term counselling model implemented across the three campuses in the last four years. UTSG’s single-session counselling model, UTSC’s One at a Time therapy (OAAT), and UTM’s short-term counselling allow students to see a counsellor for a single or a few therapy sessions to resolve a specific issue.
The report’s statistics showed that 77 per cent of students who used single-session counselling, OAAT, and short-term counselling agreed that their appointments “mostly or very much helped them develop next steps or gain new understanding to address their problem.”
During the discussion after the presentation, Bartha received a question from Ramy Elitzur, a professor of accounting at the Rotman School of Management. Elitzur expressed concern about Bartha’s data being too “simplistic and spurious.”
“Your interpretation was that the number of visits increased because of what we launched. One other interpretation is that there is more demand [and] not necessarily [that] there are more opportunities,” said Elitzur.
Elitzur assumed that there could be a trigger for students to have started visiting the tri-campus health clinics more often. “One of the things we always teach in data science is to be very careful not to mix correlation with causation,” he explained.
Bartha answered Elitzur’s comment, agreeing that she didn’t consider all the limitations of her data. However, she explained that, in mental health, “we do draw some conclusions from the data based on contextual understanding of what’s going on in the broader environment.”
“And maybe I stretch it a bit but… I actually think it’s a good thing that students who face so many barriers with stigma, anxiety about what people will think if I seek services… are using more of our services,” Bartha added.
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