After some students at Saint Mary’s University posted video of a frosh week chant online about sex with underage girls without consent, Jeff Perera shares a few words on the work we still must do to inspire young men to become models of respect and character.

TRIGGER WARNING *Click the image above to watch coverage that includes video of the chant.*

tra·di·tion

[truh-dish-uhn]  noun

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Friends, this is it.

This is why women are fed up.
This is why young women have secrets to hide, secrets to tell.
This is why women’s organizations cannot rest.
This is a song celebrating sexual assault.
This is a reminder as to why conversations about consent still need to happen.
This is where the majority of good men and young men need to step up and do something.

This is why the conversation is so urgent.

“A 15-second video posted to Instagram on Monday shows orientation week leaders leading a cheer …on a crowded football field they shout out, “Y is for your sister […] U is for underage, N is for no consent […] Saint Mary’s boys we like them young. Students said the chant has been used at frosh week for years.” – CBC News

This is your wake up call. This should be enough. When will it be enough? We are tired of hearing variations of this same old song, but we’ve been down this road before.

These truths are not new, from the heartbreaking stories of Amanda Todd and Rehtaeh Parsons, to the thousands of young women living everyday with street harassment, fear of sexual assault and harassment, or unspeakable stories tucked away inside. These experiences, and events are now captured and openly shared via smartphones and on social media platforms, consistently shared by those acting with no consideration of the impact or consequence of their actions.

There is an urgent conversation that we still need to have with young people on campuses and in schools everywhere: conversations about the everyday pressures young men feel to fit in, harmful actions and attitudes around the roles for young women and what is expected of young men, toxic ideas of what it means to successfully be a man: success at the expense of women’s safety and lives.

Some young men today are adhering to decayed codes of manhood that train them to use women as a stepping stone, a rung on a ladder for men to achieve a hollow status, acceptance and identity.

This is tradition, a tradition handed down and held up …mostly by our silence.

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These are traditions that unfortunately continue on for decades within student spaces across North America. Take for example the shameful tradition by some male students at Queens University in a picture which an alumni member pointed out to me:

Another alumni member said “ I remember driving to the campus with my parents in ’97 for first year, and seeing posters along the highway that read things like ‘Fathers, thank you for your daughters‘. It was pretty brutal. Sad and mad to see this still happening.”  I’m by the sounds of chants like the Delta Kappa Epsilon fraternity pledges near the women’s first year dorms at Yale University of “No Means Yes, Yes Means Anal!” I ask the question again and again: For our young men and boys today, is growing up an ascent or descent into Manhood?