Friday Feminist Fuck Yeah: ‘Know Your IX’ campaign to stop sexual violence

“You’ve just been raped by a student who lives down the hall from you. You suppose you’ll have to stick out the rest of the year seeing him every morning on your way to class. You work with him at your campus job. You decide you’ll just have to grin and bear it. He begins stalking and harassing you. You start to consider withdrawing from school for your own safety and mental health.”

This is the nightmarish, fucked up situation that play out all too often as every year, thousands of young women and men are sexually assaulted by their fellow students.

Simply knowing your rights in a situation like this can make all the difference.

That’s the message being put forward by “Know Your IX”, a campaign to educate every college student in the U.S. about their rights under Title IX by the start of the next academic term.

Many know of Title IX of the Educational Amendment as the law that prohibits sex-based discrimination in schools, guaranteeing things like women’s sports teams, for example. But fewer are aware that the provision also contains specific guidelines for addressing reports of sexual misconduct.

By these standards, many colleges today are failing to fulfill their legal and ethical obligations  when it comes to sexual assault and prevention policies and response.

The entire Feministing crew is extremely proud of Alexandra Brodsky and Dana Bolger, her partner and a student at Amherst College. Both are survivors of sexual assault on a college campus, and both have been working their asses off to launch this much-needed campus-focused anti-violence campaign with activists across the country.

They have just launched their Indiegogo and you can go there to support their efforts now.

You can also follow them on Twitter and like them on Facebook. Check out their piece on the Huffington Post to learn more about the effort in their own words.

Related: Survivors, not victims, at Amherst College