Toronto students staging walkout over ‘Protecting Students Act’

Students at four Toronto high schools will be staging walkouts Friday in hopes that more will be done by the Ministry of Education to protect students from sexual misconduct.

The demonstration will be in support of the growing movement called “Not Just Rumours.”

Event organizers say allegations of sexual abuse against students is often dismissed as “just rumours” and the current “Protecting Students Act” doesn’t do enough to help staff and students report sexual misconduct.

Students have launched an online petition calling for the Minister of Education, Indira Naidoo-Harris, to reform the current legislation. It has received over 17,000 signatures.

The Minister has responded saying steps are being taken to reform the “Protecting Students Act.”

Earlier this week, Ontario announced they had amended the legislation so teachers would automatically lose their license if found guilty of sexually touching a student.

Previously, the Ontario College of Teachers would only automatically revoke licences when members were found by the disciplinary committee to be guilty of certain types of sexual abuse: sexual intercourse, masturbation, and genital-to-genital, genital-to-anal, oral-to-genital, or oral-to-anal contact.

But students say it is not enough.

They are calling for the Board of Education to make it mandatory that school officials receive training to recognize and address signs of sexual harassment or abuse and ensure all officials are committed and understand the disciplinary process when sexual misconduct is reported.

They also say the “Protecting Student’s Act” should include legislation that revokes a teacher’s licenses indefinitely if they are found guilty of any type of sexual misconduct or abuse, including a clear definition of sexual misconduct.

The walkout will be happening at Harbord Collegiate Institute, Etobicoke and Rosedale School of the Arts and Central Toronto Academy at 1:30 p.m.