College students are more likely to be sexually assaulted than any other age group, according to the nation’s largest anti-sexual assault organization. Every year, the Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network (RAINN) hosts a day of action to raise awareness and educate students about sexual violence on college campuses.
This year, RAINN Day falls on Thursday, September 15th. The organization has designed it to be flexible and to accommodate the needs of different college campuses, emphasizing that activities last from one day to one month, as desired. Successful RAINN Day events can consist of screening a documentary, hosting an awareness booth, or simply distributing informational fliers – anything that encourages students to spread the word about risk reduction and recovery resources that are available to them.
The statistics are alarming. The National Sexual Violence Resource Center (NSVRC) reports that one in five women and one in 16 men are sexually assaulted while in college. On college campuses, the majority of these crimes (90%) are never even reported. Seventy-five percent of the self-reported perpetrators said they’d used alcohol prior to their most recent perpetration incident. Alcohol-related incidents were much more likely to include attempted or completed rape than incidents without alcohol, says the NSVRC.
To combat these unacceptable trends on college campuses nationwide, 3rd Millennium Classrooms offers an online prevention course called Consent & Respect. Consent & Respect is a brief online course that provides college students with facts about sexual assault, consent, intimate partner violence, stalking, warning signs of abusive behavior, the role of men as advocates, and safe and positive options that will empower bystanders in potential high-risk situations. Consent & Respect satisfies the Campus Sexual Violence Elimination Act (SaVE Act) requirement for educational programming and can also be bundled with 3rd Millennium Classrooms’ Alcohol-Wise prevention course.