When award-winning feminist activist and educator Julie Lalonde found out the Royal Military College of Canada was going to require the entire school to attend sexual harassment briefings, she was thrilled to participate. Little did she know she would need an escort to her car afterwards.

"There is always resistance to the work. I’m talking about sexual violence, which is not a comfortable topic for people," Lalonde told the Whig-Standard Thursday. "But there is a difference between skepticism or resistance and hostility.

"What I experienced at RMC was hostility that was palpable. You could walk into that room and feel the tension. I really feel like … I was set up by the institution."

Lalonde, 30, has an extensive resume in sexual violence education, and most recently she developed and manages draw-the-line.ca, and founded the Ottawa chapter of Hollaback! an international movement against street harassment. In 2011, she received a Femmy Award for her work in the National Capital region, and received the Governor General’s Award in Commemoration of the Persons Case in 2013.

On Oct. 4, 2014, Lalonde gave her "Draw the Line" presentation, a project she developed and manages as part of the province of Ontario’s antisexual violence public education campaign. During and between her briefings, she was cat-called and the victim of rape jokes, amongst other comments. After filing a complaint, Brig.-Gen. Al Meinzinger, commandant of RMC, sent a formal apology to her employer at the beginning of February.

"I would like to reiterate my apology for the unprofessional behaviour of select Officer Cadets, and any challenges that resulted from the set up and organization of the presentation," Meinzinger wrote. "Rest assured that corrective steps were taken against the most difficult groups."

In the spring of 2014, Lalonde was first asked to give her "Draw the Line" presentation to the entire officer cadet population at RMC. The daughter, granddaughter and niece of former military members, was thrilled RMC was progressive enough to force the students to attend.

The presentation touches on the legal definition of consent, what it looks like in a real-life situation, statistics of sexual violence and assault in Canada, bystander intervention, and challenging the bystander effect. Lalonde said she was also asked to speak specifically to alcohol-facilitated sexual assault and online sexual violence.

This is a presentation Lalonde said she has given more than 100 times, from Grade 6 students to other members of the military at Canadian Forces Base Petawawa. Never had she been treated in such an aggressive way.

"Alcohol-facilitated sexual assault was by far the piece they were the most opposed to," Lalonde said. "I was told women who drink too much are enabling their own rape, and that I’m naive for thinking otherwise. Just a real array of disrespectful comments that were really dismissive, and when I was coming back from lunch, walking up to the podium I was cat-called.

"At one point, one of the cadets looked me up and down, and said he might have listened to me if I wasn’t a woman and a civilian."

Held on a Saturday, Lalonde spoke to all years individually. She said the third-years were by far the most horrendous.

"Probably half the time I was there (it) was them very aggressively arguing that alcohol-facilitated sexual assault is not a problem, it’s women making poor choices," Lalonde said. "They were unbelievable. Literally getting up, clapping, cheering when someone would insult me."

Lalonde said there was a small ray of sunshine during the third-year presentation, courtesy of an officer cadet who stood up for her during the onslaught.

"He went off on them," Lalonde said. "He said, to quote: ‘The way in which we talk about women here at RMC is f—ing disgusting.’ Then went off to say he was offended he had to sit there and listen to people complain, when we are talking about women as victims, because women are the victims of sexual violence.

"That was an incredible moment, because here I was being attacked and this one person willing to stand up and challenge them and defend me, basically."

During the fourth-year presentation, Lalonde said a cadet in a leadership role also told off fellow students who were complaining and being rude.

By the end of the day, Lalonde said she was exhausted and frightened by the hostile experience.

"I pretended to not know where the parking lot was so I could be escorted to my car," Lalonde said. "The third group was so incredibly hostile that I genuinely did not feel comfortable walking across that campus by myself."

Lalonde felt the organizers of the briefings set her up to fail. When she arrived, she was told by organizers that cadets weren’t happy with her because they had been told only a few days earlier that they would have to work on a weekend.

"That was not fair to me or the cadets," Lalonde said. "You’re setting up this antagonism because they think they are here at 8 a.m. on a Saturday because I made them be here, and that I took away their weekend privilege.

"The campus decided it would be on a Saturday; I didn’t want to work on a Saturday, either."

Lalonde said there was no supervision or chain of command present for the afternoon briefings for the third- and fourth-year students.

What made things worse was when Lalonde complained to the university. Questioning her, they asked her to provide a detailed timeline of events and proper evidence of the allegations she had made. She said she was also asked for names of any victims of assault or violence who had approached her, which she did not reveal due to confidentiality.

"It was clear they had set me up in this way of ‘prove it,’" Lalonde said. "I’ve given that exact presentation to members of Parliament and if I had had a bad experience and I complained, I can’t imagine I would have been put on trial, essentially."

RMC could not be reached for comment. The Department of National Defence provided the Whig-Standard with a comment stating the goal of the briefings was to provide cadets with awareness of sexual assault and violence.

"With the sensitivity of this topic, an open environment of frank discussion was believed to be the best way to help meet the intent of these briefings," said the statement. "Ms. Lalonde’s presentation helped us meet the objective of broadening student understanding of bystander intervention."

Lalonde said the whole situation was an institutional failure.

"There was no real leadership," Lalonde said. "Just smoke and mirrors, and checking off a box."

steph.crosier@sunmedia.ca

Twitter.com/StephattheWhig