Around the campus of Ohio University, in the first four weeks of school, campus and local police have received about a dozen reports of sexual assault.
And the students have had enough.
This year, in the midst of #MeToo, of admired public figures being held accountable for past behavior toward women and when a Supreme Court justice nominee is accused of sexual assault, this well-respected university in a small, southeastern Ohio town has responded with rage and, as importantly, action.
In previous years on OU’s campus, and other campuses around the country, white bedsheets and banners hung beneath large Greek letters on fraternities and sororities on Welcome Weekends and college football game days, with messages painted to degrade and sexualize women. The sayings, so nasty we can hardly print them here, encouraged male predatory behavior and female subordination and disenfranchisement.
But last week, in Athens, anyone driving past Greek houses could read, in flapping bedsheet scrawl, “No does not mean convince me,” “Our bodies, our rules,” and “Stand with survivors.”
The students are attacking the problem with the zeal unique to college students, with campus resources pooling for women to safely walk through campus, with student government on board, with the administration’s attention and their own brand of campus signage.
It’s not just the women who are angry.
Four weeks. A dozen sexual assaults reported. And Ohio University students are ‘fed up’
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