Student Led Sexual Assault Awareness Campaign Changes UT Culture

AUSTIN- In late March, Lauren Martinez decided she had heard enough about sexual assault on college campuses. She wanted to do something—but what? The first step, for her, was awareness. She tweeted, “No more ‘they were asking for it.’ Break the silence and pledge to stand up against sexual assault,” using the hashtag #NotOnMyCampusUT.

Martinez was tapping into the University of Texas at Austin’s version of a national movement to raise awareness about campus sexual assault started at Southern Methodist University. The student-led movement at UT has spread rapidly through social media including Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook where its page has been liked 1,804 times and received attention from MTV and USA Today within a week of its launch in late March. Campaign organizers are working with other awareness groups and university orientation programs in order to make the movement part of UT for years to come.

Ellen Cocanougher, 21, is a junior biology major and president of UT’s Not On My Campus campaign, or NOMC. Cocanougher teamed up with William Herbst, 21, and Edwinn Qian, 22, on getting the movement started as her position in the university panhellenic board inspired her to focus on risk management and safety.

“Sexual assault awareness is a cause that I have always been extremely passionate, for so many of my friends have been personally affected,” said Cocanougher.

The UT Counseling and Mental Health Center reports that one in five women are sexually assaulted while in college. Cocanougher could not believe that a large campus like the University of Texas had never had a student-led movement like NOMC to introduce the conversations of sexual assault.

The three students began their process by reaching out to students and taking the names of those who were interested in getting involved.

“We had over 100 people volunteer to help us get NOMC started, which was very motivating,” said Cocanougher. With this new manpower, the founders began the outreach side of the campaign, “We put extra efforts to reach the big student leaders, athletes, and UT administrator because we knew that these were people that others looked up to.”

Participants spread their message quickly through social media, posting pictures with “not on my campus” written on their palms. Cocanougher felt that creating NOMC’s social media presence was the easiest step, as NOMC provided their community with an easy way to get involved. Currently with 1606 pledges as a campaign, Cocanougher believes that the student’s strong involvement proves that NOMC was a movement that they had been waiting for.

Interfraternity Council vice president of greek relations and NOMC founder William Herbst said the campaign gives fraternities a chance to break negative stereotypes often portrayed.

“With all the negative media attention on Greek culture and how fraternities promote rape culture, I wanted to gather the fraternities on campus to show how we fraternity men want to stand up to sexual violence,” said Herbst. “The next step is to get fraternity men to act as mentors for incoming freshman.”

Now that NOMC has ended the silence surrounding sexual assault, they are taking the steps towards igniting a change in culture by creating a constitution and developing a structure that the organization can move forward with.

“We should be leaders & champion this campaign,” said U.S. Olympian and World Champion Decathlon Trey Hardee who tweeted his support. Hardee is a former Longhorn that has helped raise awareness for NOMC by tweeting to his 17,000 followers.

“Longhorns have a long history of recognizing and getting involved in social justice issues—Not On My Campus is no exception,” said director of the Institute on Domestic Violence and Sexual Assault Noël Busch-Armendariz. “This student-driven campaign will bring further student involvement, awareness, and education to our campus—undoubtedly this leads to a safer Longhorn community and learning environment.”

NOMC will be working with counseling and mental health services, Texas Association Against Sexual Assault, Safe Place, and other Austin community resources. The organization plans to develop an effective way to define and inform the campus of what constitutes as sexual assault and what constitutes as consent, as the definitions are often blurred.

NOMC is hoping to involve the New Student Services in implementing sexual assault educational programs during orientation for freshmen.

“We have to educate incoming freshmen about campus resources and how to handle certain situations as a potential victim and as a bystander,” said Herbst.

NOMC has now been spreading their ideas and success to any college that wants to start their own campaign to fight against sexual assault. “Our generation has a big voice and is courageous enough to use it. A huge problem with sexual assault awareness is that no one wants to talk about it,” said Cocanougher. “Our generation is willing to break the silence.”