I’m currently an undergraduate here at N.C. State, and am enrolled in the Peer Educator class for The Movement. I am writing in response to the article by John Wall, “Education chief weighs in on sexual violence.” Although I believe his intentions were good and basically to raise awareness to the public here at N.C. State. However, his methods are against what we, “The Movement,” believe in and that was not the point of the Court of Carolinas Flag display.

The “preventive” measures to decrease sexual violence should not focus on what women should do, but rather how we can stop men from raping. Even if a woman does all the right things, she can still be raped because 90 percent of rapes are committed by someone the survivor knows and cares about. Also, 67-80 percent of perpetrators do it more than once, so even if someone is able to fight off the perpetrator they are going to find someone else.

By giving women “tips” on how to not be raped we, as a society are blaming the victims once the rape has been committed instead of blaming the perpetrator who actually did something wrong. The rate of sexual assaults have not decreased over time even though more and more women are taking self defense classes and doing other “preventive” measures, instead the rates are increasing – this proves that so far our methods are wrong. Instead we need to change how our culture views rape and the survivor, so then the perpetrators are the ones truly punished and that there is zero tolerance for such acts.

Frances De Los Santos

freshmen, psychology