Ahead of the festival’s 20th anniversary in April, Coachella announced several new policies designed to combat sexual harassment and assault at the festival.
The policies are outlined on their website, and include the use of Trained Safety Ambassadors who will roam the festival in order to “facilitate access to care services for anyone in distress.”
There will also be tents staffed with trained counsellors and all-gender restrooms in addition to male and female options.
The conversation about harassment at festivals has only grown louder following the rise of #MeToo and the growing spotlight on the issue of harassment in general.
After last year’s Coachella, Teen Vogue spoke to 54 women who attended, and found that every single one of them had experienced some form of harassment during the three-day weekend. In addition, a survey of 500 people conducted in 2017 found that 92% of women surveyed had experienced harassment at music festivals.
The festival also announced a new zero-tolerance policy for any form of of sexual, physical, or verbal harassment, and those who violate the policy will be removed from the festival grounds, and also potentially be stripped of their wristband.
The message on Coachella’s website reads:
“We are taking deliberate steps to develop a festival culture that is safe and inclusive for everyone. Persons of any gender identity or expression, sex, sexual orientation, race, religion, age or ability are welcome at Coachella.”
As other media outlets have pointed out, the inclusion of all-gender restrooms, while a nice gesture, is seemingly at odds with the views of Coachella founder Philip Anschutz, who has donated thousands of dollars to blatantly homophobic organisations, and who, just last year, donated $134,000 to the Republican Party.
Some activists had concerns about the implementation of these new policies, however. Maggie Arthur, organiser for the group Our Music My Body (that conducted the 2017 survey mentioned above), explained her concerns to The Daily Beast:
“It’s very easy to say we are against harassment, but how are you making that happen? So often we see zero-tolerance policies as the end-all be-all, but in practice they don’t really take into consideration what the person who’s being harmed wants or needs.”
Lollapalooza and Riot Fest both released anti-harassment statements last year, and in 2017, our own Laneway Festival set up a hotline for reporting misconduct.
It remains to be seen how effective these changes will be, but hopefully policies like this become the norm rather than remain newsworthy.