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.”
