Lady Gaga was nominated for her first ever Academy Award this year for her emotional, moving, and incredibly important song entitled “Til It Happens to You.” The song was nominated for Best Original Song as a part of the film “The Hunting Ground,” which follows college undergraduate rape survivors as they search for justice and strive to change rape culture. Although Gaga lost to Sam Smith for his song “Writings on the Wall,” I believe that she made the most important contribution to the category this year.
Admittedly, I, like many people, had never heard of “Til It Happens To You” before the Academy Awards, but the impact the song had on me was significant. During the performance, Gaga sang with so much conviction and soul that you could tell the issue was close to her heart (as I learned later, she is a sexual assault survivor herself). About half way through the performance, 52 sexual assault and rape survivors gathered with her on stage, held hands, and stood in solidarity. This moment was so powerful to watch that I decided to look for more information to better understand what the song represents and stands for.
The first thing I looked at in my search was the music video for “Til It Happens To You”. Before the content of the video begins, a warning appears on the screen, “This video contains graphic content that may be emotionally unsettling but reflects the reality of what is happening on college campuses daily.” It then goes to depict three scenes of campus sexual assault, one in a dorm room with a friend, another in a public restroom, and the last at a party with the aid of a date-rape drug. What struck me most as a woman on a college campus is that these are locations that my friends and I frequent. While continuing to watch, the only thing I could think of was that rape, which is such a damaging and earth shattering occurrence, can happen to anyone at any time, especially on a college campus.
Gaga ended the video with a deeply disturbing statistic; According to a 2015 survey by The Washington Post, 1 out of every 5 undergraduate women on college campuses will be sexually assaulted this year. That means that of the 15,057 undergraduate women at my university, it is likely that 3,012 will be assaulted, a fraction of these assaults will be reported, and in even fewer cases the perpetrators will be punished. This fact is saddening, terrifying, and unacceptable. Something needs to be done to change these numbers, and to change the way we treat campus assault. We need to teach college students to intervene in situations when partners are not able to consent, we need to believe women who claim they have been assaulted, and we need to remember that assault or rape is never the victim’s fault. Most of all, we need to teach our boys to stop sexualizing women, and not to rape. Together, we can make college campus safer for women, and hopefully someday put an end to campus assault.
