Recently, College Humor released a video in an attempt to shed more light on the statistic that one in five women will be sexual assaulted on a college campus by the time that they graduate. Although there are actually no women in the video, and the perspective may come off a little skewed because of it, the message is still very clear. Sexual assault is not an issue that should be taken lightly, it affects not only the victim and transgressor, and it is a national problem.

Too often the stances of “I don’t know what to do about it, so I just ignore it” and “the majority is fine and I don’t want to deal with this problem” have been taken when the conversation of sexual assault is brought up. It's refreshing to see outlets, especially one typically associate with comedy, taking the opportunity to make it known that sexual assault is a matter that should not be and will not be tolerated.

The topic of sexual assault is no stranger to the University of Virginia, and although there has been immeasurable progress made in the past year in an effort to inform students and help those who have found themselves victims, this video provides a fresh perspective from a source familiar to and generally trusted by students.

No one would stand by and watch someone be attacked by a bear—I hope. So why is sexual assault taken so lightly? I guess that the same conclusion is drawn regarding sexual assault, but it still happens. Is it because bears roar and are big and hairy while sexual assault isn’t? It’s certainly true that there are relatively inherent and different outcomes from both situations respectively, but the comparison is thought provoking nonetheless, and there are quite a few parallels that can be drawn. If a bear attacked someone in a suburban neighborhood, the residents of that neighborhood would try to find that bear. They would contact authorities, and they would do as much as possible to make sure that the same incident didn’t happen again. So why isn’t that approach taken when sexual assault similarly “affects us all”?

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