I’m not fond of statistics; often, I find them very depressing. But here’s one for you: 51 percent of Americans are women. Armed with this knowledge, that we are a little over half the population, we should see women linking arms in the streets headed to Washington to make positive changes.
We should, but we don’t. Women make up the largely silent majority of the population. Given that women, traditionally, have not had the opportunity to serve their community in a leadership capacity, it isn’t surprising we are still trying to figure out how to work together in order to create positive change.   
Now, for some scarier statistics, or as I like to call them, things that make me bang my head on a wall/desk: one out of six women will be sexually assaulted in her lifetime. If that doesn’t freak you out, let me give you an even more disturbing statistic: one out of four women at MSU will be sexually assaulted. That is on this campus; not some campus in Oregon. That is here, at the university in which you are enrolled. This is not something I suggest we put in the welcome brochure, but maybe we take a more active step to eliminate or, at the very least, lower.
The first step we can take is to talk about it. Sexual assault, rape specifically, is about dominance — dominance of one gender over another, usually men dominating women. In some cultures, rape is used as a way to control men in an opposing tribe. I am aware we are in the United States and we don’t often have warring tribes. Rape, however, still happens, and it happens far too often. Talking about it will remove some of the misconceptions and some of the stigma.
Secondly, MSU does some good things to protect its students. Take a look around campus: how many of those lovely, blue light, emergency call boxes do you see? Do you actually know where they are or how to use them? Are you aware the MSU Police Department offers a service to accompany members of the campus community to any on-campus location, day or night, free of charge?
Other than 911, do you know the MSU Police Department’s phone number? Do you even know where the MSU Police Department is?
Do you know where Sexual Assault Services is on campus? Do you even know if we have Sexual Assault Services on campus? Did you know MSU has a Sexual Assault Services response team?
Yes, MSU offers several workshops, brochures and services related to sexual assault. Wouldn’t it be better if we had, maybe, a presentation, I don’t know, maybe, at orientation to make students aware of all the proactive things we are doing to keep them safe?
Maybe we could implement a workshop on victimization, sexual boundaries and how to prevent victimization. Possibly a short discussion on stalking and stalker prevention should be included in orientation, since stalking is an occurrence on college campuses.
I would have preferred to find out these wonderful statistics at orientation as opposed to my senior year in an introduction to gender studies class. I dream of a world in which women aren’t sexually assaulted or shamed for being assaulted. In this dream world, saying “no” is enough and walking alone at night isn’t as terrifying to women as the monsters that once inhabited their closets and under their beds.
But for now, in our present world, the numbers don’t have to be against us. We do have the power to educate ourselves and our classmates, both women and men, and turn the statistics around.
Delilah Schmidt is a senior majoring in sociology. She can be contacted at
[email protected].