HARTSVILLE, S.C. - As part of a new campaign announced Monday (Sept. 14), Coker College athletics has joined the It’s On Us campaign to combat sexual violence on college campuses nationwide.
The campaign focuses on encouraging bystander intervention and building a campus culture that makes sexual assault unacceptable. The program is designed to bring the campus community – not just potential victims and attackers, but their classmates, peers, professors and friends – into the conversation, giving them a shared sense of responsibility for improving attitudes toward sexual violence.
In addition to Coker, student body leaders from nearly 200 colleges and universities across the United States have joined the It’s On Us campaign. The program’s goal is to fundamentally change the way people think about sexual assault and broaden bystanders’ sense of responsibility to do something to stop it.
As part of this initiative, the Justice Department Office on Violence Against Women will distribute more than $6 million in grants to fund universities’ efforts to develop campus sexual assault prevention and response programs. Currently, an estimated 1 in 5 women and 1 in 16 men are sexually assaulted while in college.
Coker student-athletes each took a pledge to be part of the solution and in turn received a t-shirt with the hashtag #itsonus.
For more information on the It’s On Us campaign visit www.itsonus.org.