Firearms have no place in sexual assault battle

Ten state legislatures are considering legislation to permit concealed firearms on college campuses. Supporters argue that firearms, especially in the hands of women, give potential victims of sexual assault the power necessary to prevent or stop a sexual assault. “If these young, hot little girls on campus have a firearm, I wonder how many men will want to assault them,” Michele Fiore, a Republican assemblywoman in Nevada, told the New York Times.

While the Editorial Board is wholeheartedly committed to preventing sexual assault on college campuses, we believe that this proposed legislation will do more harm than good. Concealed carry on college campuses not only misses many of the main points of sexual assault advocacy, it also places campus communities in grave danger.

Guns, as tools, do not have the ability to address the root problem of sexual assault: perpetrators. Arming potential sexual assault survivors puts the onus of their protection on the potential survivors, instead of on potential perpetrators to avoid committing sexual assaults and on bystanders to intervene. Both universities and policymakers alike should foster a campus culture where potential sexual assaults are recognized and stopped before they happen, not one in which students must rely on guns to ensure their own safety. 

Even if universities ultimately allow concealed carry, in reality, a potential sexual assault victim would find it impractical to carry around firearms for self-defense, especially considering who sexual assault perpetrators are. According to the National Institute of Justice, 90 percent of survivors in reported college sexual assaults knew their assailants. This indicates that many sexual assaults on college campuses occur in seemingly safe and ordinary situations, in which a gun would not be easily accessible. READ MORE

Yes Means Yes

Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape is a feminist-themed book by Jaclyn Friedman and Jessica Valenti published in 2008. The book was one of the 99 Publishers Weekly's Best Books of 2009^[1] and has inspired a sex education non-credit course at Colgate University.^[2]

The book consists of a series of 27 essays by various authors which all share the central theme of preventing rape by addressing the cultural and societal milieu that the authors claim is complicit in enabling rape. The title is a reference to the popular "No Means No" campaign against date rape. Contributors to the anthology include Rachel Kramer Bussel, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha, Stacey May Fowles, Coco Fusco, Lisa Jervis, Heather Corinna, Julia Serano, Hanne Blank, and Margaret Cho.
Colgate is committed to improving the sexual climate on campus, providing numerous programs to promote healthy sexuality. ^[3] Not only do they offer a course on Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape, they have a committee as well. This committee is called The Sexual Climate Advisory Committee. ^[4] This committee is composed of faculty, staff, and students.^[5] It is charged with developing and evaluating initiatives at the individual, environmental, and system level that contribute to a climate of sexual respect. ^[6]Scott Brown, who is the dean of students, leads monthly meetings. ^[7]

From the slogan, "No Means No", colleges are abandoning the old slogan and accepting "Yes Means Yes" to promote more positivity. “The swiftly evolving conversation about defining sexual assault signaled to us that we needed to reframe our name as something more positive... and it’s even possible that ‘No means no’ will be an outdated or irrelevant concept in 10 years. Students may not have even heard of the phrase by then", said by Allison Korman, the group’s executive director.^[8] Now, there are more than eight hundred colleges and universities that have adopted an affirmative consent definition in their sexual assault policies.^{[9] 
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