BURSTEIN: Sexual assault must be addressed in high school

Sexual assault is a buzzworthy topic for college students in 2016. As soon as I was accepted to Boston University, I was made to think that my university was doing everything it could to prevent cases of sexual assault. I witnessed skits and videos at orientation before freshman year. I took surveys and received emails pledging that my administration was taking steps to ensure my safety and that of my peers.

College sexual assault stories have become so common at this point that we have become numb to their poignancy. Ever since the now infamous Rolling Stone article detailing that an alleged rape at the University of Virginia was proven factually incorrect, it feels like we, as a society, let our concerns about sexual assault slip away.

And yet, the epidemic still persists.

Films like “The Hunting Ground” have attempted to shed a light not only on the high number of sexual assaults that take place on college campuses, but the lack in capability of administrations to handle situations correctly. Even our very own BU has allegedly failed in this light, causing students like myself to reflect on why it seems so difficult to develop some kind of comprehensive reform to fight sexual assault.

But perhaps sexual assault’s persistence on college campuses does not only stem from administrations that do not take enough active steps. Perhaps, instead, it stems from a lack of education that should have been taught earlier in students’ lives.

This past Thursday, The Huffington Post published an in-depth look at the hidden world of sexual assault that does not take place in college, but in high school. The article focused on the stories of victims who were failed by their high school’s administration after reporting a sexual assault by another student.

These schools, like universities, need to comply with Title IX to ensure that all students have access to a safe education, yet according to the article, some administrations do not even know who on their staff is supposed to be handling Title IX incidents. In one case, a high school even expelled a female student who reported a sexual assault. In another, an accuser was kept in the same class as her accused assaulter.

This is not the first time high schools have come under fire for acting inefficiently when students’ lives were endangered. The nation was shocked by a report that two football players in Steubenville, Ohio raped a student from a rival school in 2013. Just last Thursday, the head coach of the Conestoga High School football team in Pennsylvania resigned after reports surfaced of violent hazing on the team that included horrendous acts of sexual assault.

Looking back and knowing all that I know now about the prevalence of sexual assault among young adults my age, I can hardly believe that I did not receive a more comprehensive sexual education in my high school years.

I am lucky because my high school taught us about birth control options, sexually transmitted infections and even touched upon sexual assault. That being said, just because we were given the information from a PowerPoint slide does not mean we actually learned it.

It was not comprehensive and was made to sound unrealistic, that something like “rape” could never actually happen to us. We never even had assemblies or presentations about the prevalence of sexual assault for people our age. I cannot even imagine what sexual education is like in areas that actually do censor what can and cannot be taught.

Clearly, not only is the U.S. high school sex education system ineffective, but our middle school system is also endangering students if such a high number of sexual assaults are occurring in high school. One in five women are sexually assaulted in high school, according to a 2008 study. That’s far too similar to the college statistics.

In some cases, including my own, high school is the first time that students feel like they have any sense of independence, and in the same way we treat high school students going off to college, we must make sure these young high school students have enough knowledge to not make destructive decisions.

I am not at all saying we should stop demanding more from our college administrators in response to sexual assaults. However, we should also demand and expect more from our high schools and middle schools. To some, sex is taboo, and maybe parents are opposed to having their children learn about sexual assault at a young age. But clearly, when 20 percent of girls are sexually assaulted during high school, more must be done.

I look forward to the day when a student, whether in high school or college, is trusted and protected by their administration, so they can move forward knowing that justice is being served. Until then, every school in this country has work to do.