The White House has launched an ambitious branding campaign aimed at ending sexual assaults on college campuses, in part by enlisting the support of major college sports leagues and celebrities, the Washington Post reports. President Obama and Vice President Biden launched the initiative, “It’s On Us.” Lilly Jay, who introduced Biden spoke in stark personal terms about what it meant to be raped as a student at Amherst and try to “reclaim college.”
Obama and Biden emphasized that men needed to join the effort to make sexual assault socially unacceptable. Biden, who will hold a roundtable discussion on domestic violence Friday in Denver, addressed men, declaring, “So step up, you guys. Speak out.” He said, “It's on all of us to change the culture that asks the wrong questions, and our culture still asks the wrong questions.” One in five women will be sexually assaulted while in college, studies say. The first 15 weeks of college can be the riskiest; the group Futures Without Violence launched “The Other Freshman 15,” a letter-writing campaign aimed at getting college officials to address the issue.