Recently, sexual assault and harassment cases have become more common on college campuses across the country. As Oles, I believe that we would all like to think that those kinds of things wouldn’t or don’t occur here. Unfortunately there have been cases reported, both recently and in the past. The good news about this is that St. Olaf has teamed up with the national movement named It’s On Us; the goal of this movement is to make people more aware of what sexual assault is and how to prevent it from happening.
Sexual assault comes in different forms, no matter how small a violation. “Sexual assault” is defined as the following: “Sexual Assault, sometimes referred to as rape, is any sexual contact with another person who does not or cannot give consent.” No incident is too small: if you are questioning whether or not to report an incident, chances are you should. Thankfully, St. Olaf has many great resources that can help you with this. You can speak with your JCs/RAs, SARN, the pastors, the Boe House or any faculty member about an incident.
You might be wondering how the It’s On Us movement works with St. Olaf. We have teamed up with this project that was started as a collaboration between President Barack Obama, VP Joe Biden and many universities across the country to help prevent campus sexual assault. You can join this movement by clicking the link and signing the pledge to stop sexual assault on our campus. So far great progress has been made with this and 185 Oles signed the pledge in the first two days it was live. You can also like the It’s On Us St. Olaf Facebook page to stay updated on the movement. Let us work hard to make this movement successful and well known, and remember to never leave an Ole behind.
You can access all of the information about this movement here