As a part of Sexual Assault Awareness month, the University of Oregon did the same public display as last year. They set up thousands of red solo cups with red flags attached to them on the front lawn of the quad. I believe the goal was to bring a reality check to people unaware of really how many people are affected by sexual assault. With my excellent estimating skills, I am guessing there were maybe 1,800 cups, maybe 2,000. Then I did some math. There are 24,125 students enrolled at the U of O, 12,672 are female. If 25% of college women face sexual assault that’s 3,168 women at the U of O who have faced or will face sexual assault. Now let’s look at the men, and the running statistic that 1 in 16 college men will face sexual assault. With 11,453 male students, that’s 714 men who have or will face sexual assault. In total, almost 4,000 students are affected by sexual assault at the U of O. That’s much higher than the amount of cups that were present. I’m not saying that the cup representation is a bad awareness tactic; in fact, I think it works really well, as it is in the center of campus and it’s kind of hard to miss 2,000 red solo cups.

With the brief interviews I’ve conducted with students, every single person I interviewed knew at least one or more people who have been sexually assaulted. And all but one of those people’s rapists had not been punished through the judicial system. We all know sexual assault legislation needs a change, and fast, but we all know that’s not really happening anytime soon.

This week I had the opportunity of speaking with a sexual assault/domestic abuse attorney, whose real name will not be mentioned in this article. I’ll refer to her as Erica. Erica said there are two court options for assault victims — either civil or criminal court. Criminal court is usually the first step after reporting to a police officer. If you have read my other article titled Beyond a Reasonable Doubt, you know that’s the famous one-liner in criminal court. What it essentially means is that if there is any sort of reasonable doubt that the alleged rapist did not rape the victim, i.e. the alleged claiming that it was consensual, then they get off scot-free. Civil court is different. This is where victim’s lives are rummaged through for anything that could possibly make their case less believable, including their medical and psychiatric records, personal phone calls/texts/emails, depositions from ex-boyfriends, and even their previous sexual history. Most victims choose not to go through civil court as it is very draining and often does not play out in their favor.

I have already advocated for a change in legislation, but I feel that the real enemy here is not rapists, not lawyers, not policies, but our society. If so many people are being assaulted, think about how many rapists are out there. Red solo cups shouldn’t be out on the front lawn to represent 4,000 students affected by sexual assault. I say we put thousands of red solo cups on the front lawn to represent how many rapists walk our campus halls. Now that’s a scare tactic!