During the course of my Freshman Orientation, the students had to attend several seminars. One optional panel on studying abroad, another on living on-campus if you planned to do so... and one mandatory one on sexual assault.

I was uncomfortable. Like 1 in 6 American women, I was more than educated on consent. I wanted to ask to be excused, but my anxiety got the better of me.

We were shown a comedic video using tea as a metaphor for consent. I had seen it before. Though I disliked the frivolous approach, it was educational and comprehensive video. I thought maybe it could really educate someone.

But as I taking deep breathes, trying to deny my own experience ("It's fine. That's not how it happened. You didn't fight it."), a group of teenage boys three rows behind me were laughing (not at the video's comedic timing, but at the concept of consent itself.)

It was my Freshman Orientation, and I was somewhere in-between anger and despair. In high school, I had naively thought some men who rape were merely uneducated. Comedies like Revenge of Nerds or what President Trump calls "Locker Room Talk" influenced their way of thinking. While the later is still true, I had to come to grips with the fact these men were stuck in their ways. These men didn't see anything wrong with the way they were doing things, and any attempts at consent education wouldn't be taken seriously.

And, really, it shouldn't have taken me so long to come to this conclusion.

At my high school, most men considered rape is just something girls say because they either regret having sex or want attention. Many accusations of rape from my female peers were met with one or two of these same dismissals. A boy in my senior ethics class, who now has a football scholarship to a nice university, even raised his hand to announce this strong conviction to the whole class.

Their head says, "No matter what these mandatory things say, they are not right." What they do is just playing the field. They rationalize, they victim-blame ("She's a slut. She shouldn't be drinking.") To them, what they do is not "real rape." Despite the statistics they're shown, a rapist is not him and his friends drinking at a party, but a violent stranger.

After the student proclaimed his righteous beliefs on rape, the teacher chilled us all with a story of how a girl was not only raped at that very high school but also how the boys filmed it and were allowed to continue at the school with no disciplinary action. The girl left.

Speaking had ruined her life, as it does many women. The men are the ones given the benefit of the doubt. The women become social pariahs. They need to leave their schools entirely. Speaking out takes over lives so much, they wish they had said nothing at all.

I have a close friend whose story goes almost the exact the same way, and I hear one almost every week. With what's happening in Hollywood, it's almost every day.

If I had spoken out, perhaps that would have been my story.

The Obama Administration put pressure on colleges to provide mandatory consent education and outreach, but what about before?

According to the NSRVC, one in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually abused before they turn 18 years old. 30% of women were between the ages of 11 and 17 when they were assaulted. More than one-third of women who report being raped before age 18 also experience rape as an adult. 81% of women and 35% of men report significant short-term or long-term impacts such as Post- Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). In 8 out of ten rape cases, the person knew the person who assaulted them.

For people to truly be educated on rape, mandatory, comprehensive consent education needs to begin earlier than college. We need to end Abstinence-only sex education, and include mandatory consent education in public schools all around America. Consent should be understood at all ages. Education should happen before young adults are sealed in their ways by the misguided media and their misguided peers.

Like colleges, high schools needed to be held to a higher standard. They need to provide full transparency when dealing with cases of sexual assault and place emphasis on the victim. If not, they should face serious repercussions.