The Obama administration is launching a big new offensive: Combating sexual assault on college campuses.
On Friday, the White
House launched "It's On Us," a campaign aimed at tackling the problem
plaguing universities across the country. The movement, developed from
recommendations issued by a White House-ordered task force in April, will seek to raise awareness and educate college students about the issue and what can be done to prevent it.
A top priority
"It's On Us" is a next step in a series taken by the Obama administration to address the problem of sexual assault at colleges.
In April, the task force
released a 20-page report that highlighted what it described as the four
most pressing problems in this area:
• Identifying the problem on campuses;
• Engaging men in prevention measures;
• Effectively responding to assault where it's reported; and
• Increasing transparency in the federal government's effort to enforce laws and respond to sexual assault cases.
The new campaign will
focus on tackling those issues by expanding student-led efforts at
individual colleges and partnering with associations including the NCAA
and athletic conferences such as the Big Ten, and large companies,
including Viacom, which will promote the campaign on MTV, VH1 and BET.
Over 200 colleges have signed on to participate in the campaign,
including Dartmouth, the University of Michigan and Bates College.
"This is on all of us,
every one of us, to fight campus sexual assault," President Obama said
Friday. "We are going to organize campus by campus, city by city, state
by state; this entire country is going to make sure that we understand
what this is about and that we're going to put a stop to it."
Senior administration
officials told reporters in a conference call ahead of Friday's
unveiling that ending sexual assault has been a top priority throughout
Obama's presidency.
"Since the very
beginning of the administration, the President and vice president have
made it a top priority to end sexual assault. Today, one in five women
is sexually assaulted while in college," senior Obama officials told
reporters on a conference call.
"Most often, it happens
to her during (the victim's) freshman or sophomore year by someone she
knows. And also most often, she doesn't report what happened."
The one-in-five statistic is often cited by the White House when discussing this issue. It is derived from two studies conducted in 2007 and 2009. Many sexual assault instances go unreported, so it is difficult to get a complete count of instances.
source; cnn.com
