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Sexual violence doesn’t wait for college

Here’s the ugly truth: while there’s been a lot of talk about gender violence on college campuses, too many K-12 students face harassment and violence at school, and often teachers and administrators fail to stop and respond to this mistreatment.

Often, these school failures are illegal: students at public schools, and other K-12 schools that receive federal funding, are protected by Title IX. To spread the word, our own Dana and Mahroh, along with young activists across the country, have created a Know Your IX toolkit for high school students. They write:

Rape doesn’t just happen in college. K-12 students suffer sexual and dating violence too. Student survivors who attend public schools, and other schools that receive federal funding, are protected by a 1972 civil rights law called Title IX. In brief, Title IX requires schools to act to prevent violence before it occurs (through, for instance, training and educational programming) and to respond to it after the fact, to remedy its impact (through, for instance, free counseling, academic accommodations, and other support services).

On this site, you can find information on high school student survivors’ legal rights, schools’ legal obligations, and resources and tools for accessing support, including:

Are you a high school student? Dana and Mahroh are looking for your ideas and advice for other young activists; you can reach them at knowyourIX [at] gmail [dot] com. Are you an ally? Do a mitzvah and send out the Know Your IX guide to a student in your life.

 

Washington, DC

Alexandra Brodsky was a senior editor at Feministing.com. During her four years at the site, she wrote about gender violence, reproductive justice, and education equity and ran the site's book review column. She is now a Skadden Fellow at the National Women's Law Center and also serves as the Board Chair of Know Your IX, a national student-led movement to end gender violence, which she co-founded and previously co-directed. Alexandra has written for publications including the New York Times, the Atlantic, the Guardian, and the Nation, and she is the co-editor of The Feminist Utopia Project: 57 Visions of a Wildly Better Future. She has spoken about violence against women and reproductive justice at campuses across the country and on MSNBC, ABC, NBC, CBS, CNN, FOX, ESPN, and NPR.

Alexandra Brodsky was a senior editor at Feministing.com.

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