Students plan walkout after sex assault allegations

At Western University in Canada, students were due to stage a campus demonstration on Friday 17 September, denouncing sexual and gender-based violence at the institution, writes Megan Devlin for DH News.

The walkout comes during a turbulent start to the academic year, in which four alleged sexual assaults have been reported to the university so far and one student has been arrested. There have also been allegations posted to social media about mass druggings at residence parties, although police and the university say they’ve not yet received formal complaints about those. In an unrelated incident, a male first-year student was beaten to death on campus over the weekend. A 21-year-old suspect, who is not a student at the university, has been charged with manslaughter.

Western University’s president Alan Shepard released a statement last Tuesday saying the administration is “working around the clock to gather the facts and act upon them”. “These are very disturbing reports … At this time, Western and LPS have received very little information related to the social media reports, and we’re asking anyone with more details to please come forward.”
Full report on the DH News site