Many high school and college students are having to watch their back or pay attention to what they are wearing in fear of being sexually assaulted in the bathroom, back of the bus, or even in the classroom. For Regis’ student body, the hallway can be especially perilous.

According to a 2019 survey, 15% of women get sexually assaulted in high school and one out of four girls are sexually harassed before their 18^th birthday, but many people don’t hear about it.  During these vulnerable times, many school administrations try to cover the assault up in fear of ruining their reputation. I know a family friend of mine who had been sexually assaulted, and the pressure of her co-workers and boss, kept her quiet which later affected her mental health.

Schools across the globe, alongside Regis, need to prioritize justice for the victims and the mental health of their students, raising awareness, providing treatment for those victims, and helping prevent assault in the first place.

Schools that doesn’t care about the mental health of their student body is not really a good school. When admin, teachers and student combined, ignore the sexual assault that is happening on their campus it can affect the victims mental health. This could lead to academic issues. Their trauma can not only affect their mental health but also their education, which can eventually affect the other student’s education.

A school’s number one priority should be to make sure that their student’s feel safe and to ensure that they get the best education they can get. Already there is a numerous amount  of people that commit suicide due to being in college. In a sample out of 158 female suicide attempted age 20 years and older , 50% of the subjects reported having been sexually abused at some time. Schools aren’t really the place that they present themselves as.

On top of schools trying to hide these cases, they are also keeping these perpetrators in school, leaving victims with post-traumatic stress. Most perpetrators are peers, staff members and even teachers, not a stranger in the bushes. A large amount of students may even try to avoid certain teachers. Thus, causing a student or students to change their major or drop out of that class. Students will then take on professions that they aren’t even passion about or don’t even like, all to avoid that teacher and being sexually abused. Some may even just drop out of school all together. Students are taking the next step to ensure their safety and I think that if young adults already know what should be their priorities, grown staff-members should also be able to do so.

There are many misconceptions about sexual assault, one of them being  that victims are lying about their stories, but in DiCanio(1933) researchers and prosecutors estimated to a range of 2% to 10% of false allegations. Some may even say it’s not that common, and the rare cases that it does happen it’s a homeless guy in the alley or a old drunk guy at the bar. Or that “they could’ve just said no” , “you shouldn’t have drank that much” or even “you were asking for it from the clothes that you were wearing”. Jon Krauker had said in his book Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town that “women don’t get raped because they were drinking or taking drugs. Women don’t get raped because they weren’t careful. Women get raped because someone raped them” or that 90 % of the time when an individual is raped or sexually abused, the rapist gets away with the crime.

Bringing awareness, providing treatment and therapy, and bringing their case to court is what every school should do not matter what their school is known for. This act should be done out of the goodness of their heart and not just because every other school is doing it or because the law states that they would have to.

High Schools all across the state have the motto of being a safe environment  for students and a great place to learn skills for college. But are they really preparing students to handling and preventing being sexually assaulted especially in college, which is the most common place to sexually abused? Is your school preparing you to handle these type of unfortunate situation or, letting you know what is really going on behind those closed doors?