To every college student,

Earlier this week, word broke that Brock Turner was found guilty and sentenced to six months for sexually assaulting an unconscious 23-year-old woman behind a dumpster. Brock Turner was found guilty on three counts and sentenced to six months. Let that sink in.

Turner was sentenced to six months for a crime that will have unmeasurable repercussions.

I understand investigations need to be thorough. I understand that there have been false accusations made against innocent people and I understand that there are two young and impressionable lives on the line. But I don't understand that.

After reading about the Stanford rape case, I have had a hard time concentrating on anything else. My mind always seems to wander back to it. She is only 23. Twenty-three. Her life has been forever changed and altered and yet she is only 23. She was just a 22-year-old girl at a college party that drank too much and that has been hitting me hard because I will be 22 later this year.

I read her letter to her attacker in it's entirety over the course of several hours. Some details were too difficult to fathom, to imagine. I tried placing myself in all of the positions involved -- being the victim's sister, being a friend of the rapist, being a passerby at the party, being her. I couldn't get through the details and the emotions in one sitting. I couldn't read about the terrible events that took place and perpetuated trauma to the victim and not have it affect me, a simple female college student totally detached from the events, reading them and trying to understand, safe behind a phone screen.

After reading the questions posed to the Stanford victim I imagined how I would have had to answer them. There have been times I didn't eat enough dinner before I went out. There have been times someone has offered me a drink and I have taken it without questions asked. There have been times that I haven't drank much and other times I drank so much that I swore off drinking the next day. There have been times I wore mini skirts and crop tops out and there have been times I've gone out in a t-shirt and jeans. There have been times I couldn't piece together what happened the night before and times I've had to help my friends put their night together. I have consumed alcohol both when I was single and in a relationship. Yet, I have never been in this terrible position and I consider myself unfathomably lucky.

I realized that from the questions posed to the victim that if I had been the one answering them, then I too have put myself and witnessed situations that would have put me and others in this position of trusting other human beings to be decent and not take advantage of someone incoherent and unresponsive. I realized that by considering myself lucky to not have been a victim that there is some exponential problem that makes me feel lucky for not having been a victim.

I imagined having to tell my little sister that the party that we went to together resulted in me waking up in a hospital room. I imagined having to tell my parents that the stories in the paper were about me. I imagined having to call up my boyfriend and defend my innocence when at every opportunity other people were blaming me for provoking an encounter I never wanted. I imagined the isolation, the finger pointing, the embarrassment, and the constant feeling of insecurity. I imagined being me and going to a party and getting a lot more intoxicated than I had meant to and my entire life being changed in a matter of hours but I couldn't imagine it.

I have read the letters from the victim and from the rapist's parent and character witnesses. As an outsider, I have tried to understand, tried to self-educate about what can happen if I get careless or I lose control. But then I realized, that only concerning myself with what the woman did wrong is the exact culture that the rapist and his family are perpetuating.

In my time in college as a woman I have learned a lot. For me, this is one lesson I have not and hope to never learn the hard way. I wish it was a lesson that I never had to learn at all. I wish there was a simple solution that I could just set forth to solve this problem in the world. But every time I try to I come up with the same solution -- be a decent human being and look out for one another.

I have listened to stories from my fellow peers -- terrifying accounts of situations they have been involved in and my heart has ached every time. Sometimes alcohol was involved. Sometimes it wasn't. Sometimes it involved someone they knew, and sometimes it didn't. But alcohol and promiscuity is not to blame here because it's not an excuse.

I wish I lived in a world where things like this didn't happen more than anything. I wish I didn't have to feel nervous walking by myself. I hate that going out without your friends is dangerous. I hate that wearing something or not wearing something makes certain people think that "you're asking for it." I hate the fact that almost every rape that the age most rape victims are assaulted is while they are in college. I hate the fact that sexual assault on men is disregarded or not talked about. I hate this blame-the-victim culture. I hate the fact that 1 in 5 women in college is sexually assaulted. I hate that more than anything.

This story has caused a national uproar that has initiated a conversation about sexual violence. Through this, I hope lessons can be learned. I hope all of my fellow peers learn that we need to do more. Because there is power in looking out for one another. Because it is up to us to take our friend home when he or she gets in over his or her head. Because it is up to me to step in when I see something off. Because no matter if you are a man or a woman, things like this happen everyday and it can be prevented and it's up to us, all of us, to make sure that it matters. Because it doesn't matter if he's a football player or a swimmer or a high school dropout or doctor. It doesn't matter what their race or sexual orientation is. It doesn't matter what she's wearing or how much they had to drink. It doesn't matter if it's your friend or a random person you've never met before. It's up to us, all of us, to stand up when we see things that are wrong.

"Sometimes I think, if I hadn’t gone, then this never would’ve happened. But then I realized, it would have happened, just to somebody else. You were about to enter four years of access to drunk girls and parties, and if this is the foot you started off on, then it is right you did not continue." - Victim (source: https://www.buzzfeed.com/katiejmbaker/heres-the-po...)

So please, when the fall comes around and a new semester begins, all I ask is that you remember it is up to us, all of us, to look out for one another.