So, this week’s problem facing the higher education system in America is the issue of sexual assault on college campuses.

Even though college campus sexual assaults aren’t very high per number of students, the amount of unreported and off campus assaults do not get added into crime statistic reports. Every once in a while, I will receive a crime alert from Penn State to my phone about a crime on campus, and most commonly– it’s been sexual assault.

Most disturbingly, one at the beginning of this semester was a sexual assault by four members of a fraternity on one victim. It scared me. I don’t even understand dhow that’s possible in a way. Obviously, I do, but it’s so disturbing I wish that I didn’t in a way.

I think the bigger problem is that it’s fairly well-known that when an athlete commits a sexual assault on a college campus, maybe not at Penn State, but as a promising college athlete, they typically have their wrongdoings swept under their rug to protect not only the university or college’s reputation, but to keep their sports teams at the top.

I don’t want to focus in on athletes, because I don’t want to make generalizations. However, I think that colleges sweeping things under the rug is the big problem. For example, the sweeping under the rug of the Larry Nassar abuse of gymnasts from across the globe at Michigan State University’s campus. The university was told about the abuse plant of times from 1994 up until Larry Nassar was convicted and never once did they do anything to fix or correct the situation that they knew was going on for years.

All colleges have been guilty, I’m sure, of sweeping sexual assault under the rug or ignoring it all together. Women, the most common victims, are asked what they were wearing, did they drink, how much did they drink, did they make any move toward the assaulter, was there any reason the assaulter would believe that it was what they wanted, and did they ask for it?

No matter what I did, I did not deserve it. I don’t care what any one of the victims did, they don’t deserve it. I will never deserve it. I will NEVER have asked for it. Let me say again, I WILL NEVER HAVE ASKED FOR IT.

College campuses should be required to report any sexual assault and abuses within a certain mile radius of the campus. It’s clear that rapes and assaults happen every day, and I’m sure they happen off campus in the hundreds of apartments that Penn State students reside in. I’d like to believe it doesn’t happen much at the school I go to, but I know how the real world works, and I know the statistics of the amount of people that are sexually assaulted every day. Penn State does not have to report or does not have a reporting system for any of the apartments where students reside off campus.

It’s never asked for. It’s never deserved. The reporting needs to improve and get a better statistic system in place. It’s never asked for.