"Right Now Is The Most Dangerous Time To Be A Woman At College"

Article here. Excerpt:

'It’s the time of year called the Red Zone: the weeks between new student orientation and Thanksgiving break when college students are at the greatest risk of sexual assault. According to statistics, one in five women will be sexually assaulted while she’s at school — usually by someone she knows — and a disproportionate number of those attacks are happening right now.

Several factors contribute to this disturbing trend. First year students are meeting new people and trying new things. Many of them are newly independent, living without parental support for the first time. And, they’re in a new place, adjusting to an unfamiliar and often bigger environment.

A first year student at the University of North Carolina at Wilmington put a fine point on it: "Since we're in a new place, we're all really vulnerable and uncomfortable with our surroundings for a while. People can tell if someone's a freshman."

We should not accept this as the status quo; it doesn’t need to be inevitable. Our friends and sisters entering college shouldn’t have a target on their backs. And, I don’t need to tell you how damaging sexual assault is for survivors. You know that rape is traumatizing, probably through personal experience or because someone you love was assaulted. It breaks my heart that this has happened to people I care about, and that it will happen thousands of times between now and Thanksgiving. But, I want to tell you this is not a problem without a solution. This is not someone else’s problem. This is our problem, and we can solve it.'