MONCTON, NB – Crandall’s Feminist Psychology class hosted an escape room as part of their final project for the course, an assignment which asked them to communicate something of what they’ve learned in the class with the Crandall community. This escape room was attended by approximately 60 students, faculty, and staff who came by to participate and learn about sexual harassment in the process.
The escape room experience was designed around a student trying to navigate and report a sexual harassment while at the fictional Bridgerton University, the scenario inspired by a recent Harvard sexual harassment case that made the news. The escape room featured a kitchen, office, and student bedroom spaces full of hidden clues and the evidence needed to report.
While researching this project the students learned that, unlike other countries, Canada has no special law protecting university students from harassment, so students in provinces without such rules (including New Brunswick) remain at the mercy of their school’s own voluntary processes and reporting rules. This prompted students to propose that Crandall revisit its own policies to ensure that they conform with current best practices.
In the initial planning process the students initially wanted to make the escape room unbeatable, in an effort to communicate just how difficult negotiating the reporting of a sexual harassment case really is, but eventually settled on determining each participant’s fate by the roll of a dice with a 1/7 chance of success.
Feminist Psychology is a fourth year seminar course that sees lively discussion on a variety of topics ranging from issues like sexual harassment, to the methods psychologists use to conduct research, to what it means to be a Christian feminist.
