It's 12:30 in the afternoon and I'm sitting in my math class when I notice that my phone is lighting up on top of my backpack. Thinking that it's just one of my friends texting me about meeting up to go to the gym or something, I peer over to see it and instead find a text from my school's campus alerts. It reads: A Forcible Sex Offense has occurred. Another one. Being that it was in the middle of the day, I was caught off guard. I stare at the text with disbelief, very confused as to why this is still happening so frequently.

While I was learning algebra, getting the education we all go to college in the pursuit of, someone had been sexually assaulted on this campus.

And that's the thing with college rape: it's so sudden. No one sees it coming; everyone somehow believes they are invincible. We think, "Oh, I would never get myself into a situation like that." And that is exactly what disconnects us from the problem itself. We internally comment on these rape cases and think, "Well, that's not my problem, it's theirs." And that's where you're wrong.

As I've grown up, I've come to realize that "I am only one person" is really just one big, lazy lie. If we all had that mentality, we would never move forward. There are so many ways we can help bring some kind of change to this epidemic, but the first is realizing that there is no "us" and "them." Just because you were lucky enough to never be a victim, doesn't mean this issue is any less relevant to you. I shouldn't have to tell you someone's personal experiences to make you care or tell you statistics on college rape to scare you because this issue should matter and affect every student walking on campus.

What I'm saying is that we need to be united in this idea of fighting against college rape. Most people will tell you they are of course against it, but that's simply not enough. I used to think, "Maybe we just need more security guards, or maybe this or maybe that." And sure those might help, but they can't catch everything that goes on. This issue starts and ends with the people of our generation. We have the power to take a stand against this issue if we make it prominent in someway in our lives.

My sorority, Alpha Delta Pi, is nationally paired with Sigma Phi Epsilon, in raising awareness about sexual assault prevention, in a campaign called "Live Your Oath." Each sorority and fraternity member featured in the video pledges an oath to help commit to ending this problem. The people featured in the video below are a perfect example of those who have made college rape their problem, even though it was never a burden they went through themselves. These are the kind of people that are going to make a difference in someone's life. These are the kind of people whose dedication we should try strive to have.

And so I'm asking you to do something, anything, so that one day, we don't have to see 12 messages a month of forcible sex offender occurrences, and we don't have to keep hearing, "You are one in five," of those who will be raped in college. Maybe just maybe someone in this video made a difference in the values of some college boy, who never treated a girl right. Maybe just maybe some mom will watch this video and sit down and have a conversation with her son about the importance of getting consent from girls he is with. That's the thing: we need to keep having conversations about this, no matter how sick and tired we are of seeing it in headlines, because that's the best thing we can do to make a change, to give this as much attention as it deserves.

It's not a problem, it's our problem. I've made it mine, and you should too.