In the past few years, the topic of campus sexual violence has grown from relative obscurity in the political and news media to a regular item of discussion on television, in editorial pages and among policymakers. Last September, he White House started its own campaign to end campus sexual violence, “It’s On Us,” at the launch of which Vice President Joseph Biden vowed to “change the culture that asks the wrong questions.” Following the midterm elections last November, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) suggested that legislation dealing with sexual assault on campus might — just might — be one of those issues where Democrats and Republicans might be able to come together.

Some states have taken matters into their own hands as well; California, for instance, became the first state in the union to adopt an affirmative consent or “yes means yes” policy that applies to all colleges and universities operating in its jurisdiction. And, of course, individual colleges and universities have enacted school-specific reforms — sometimes due to pressure from students and sometimes due to a Department of Education investigation. Results from a recent survey by the Association of American Universities of 150,000 students at 27 universities nationwide, in which a little more than one in five women report being a victim of sexual assault, mean that despite the media coverage and despite the institutional reforms, we aren’t yet seeing any progress. 

Here at Brandeis — where we are indeed a school under investigation by the Department of Education for Title IX violations due to how sexual assault is handled here on campus — 22 percent of women report in the most recent survey that they are a victim of sexual assault, according to the Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Misconduct. 

A few caveats about how to interpret surveys like these: first, given how little time it has been since many universities have begun implementing their reforms, it’s not necessarily reasonable to expect immediate changes in such survey responses. Second, because this is an issue not only of policy but of culture, it may unfortunately be a while before universities experience a substantial shift in cultural behavior — even if new policies make it easier to find some measure of justice for victims of sexual violence. Nevertheless, these survey results warrant substantial concern (if not outrage), and they compel us to ask important questions about how we are approaching the issue of campus sexual violence in the first place. 

Common wisdom holds that a shift in policy at the university level will somehow lend itself to a shift in mindset among university students. However, this assumption fails to consider how monumentally important it is that we extend this conversation into high schools as well. We may now be in college, but preventing campus sexual violence begins far before we even consider filling out the Common Application. To not acknowledge this reality is, in my view, a monumental strategic mistake for all involved in preventing sexual violence on campus.

Let’s take a moment to examine sexual violence in middle and high school. According to a 2008 study of over 1,000 middle and high school students, published in the Journal of Youth and Adolescence, 39.9 percent of middle school girls report having been sexually assaulted; among high school girls, the figure rises to 52.5 percent. Now, this specific study does classify “kissed, hugged, touched” as sexual assault — which, in many contexts, it is — but even if you only accept a more narrow definition of sexual assault, the number of female high school students who report “attempted rape,” “oral sex,” “rape,” or “something else sexual” is still well over 20 percent.

 I haven’t  the column inches (nor the personal strength) to break down like I just did every piece of literature I’m about to cite, but here are a few of the most stomach-churning headlines, compiled in a November 2014 Al-Jazeera article: “In a given school year, 58 percent of 7th-12th graders experience sexual harassment”; “1 in 20 sexually harassed girls switches schools each year because of it”; “Middle school bullies are 4.6 times more likely to sexually harass”; “1 in 8 high school girls says she’s been raped”; “18 percent of teens report being sexually abused in their relationships”; “12 percent of teens admit that they’ve sexually abused someone they’re dating”; “60 percent of high schools boys find it acceptable to force sex on a girl in some circumstances”; and “Only half of high school rape victims told anyone about it. ”

Across the nation, attempts to have nuanced and realistic discussions in sexual education classes have been stymied by conservatives advocating abstinence-only education. Because a nuanced discussion of sex is necessary to have a nuanced discussion of consent, a byproduct of such politics is that consent education is depressingly lacking in high school sex ed classes around the country; despite being the first, California is thus far the only state to teach affirmative consent in high schools as well. 

Matt Rocheleau, a correspondent with the Boston Globe, points out that “experts and advocates said they recommend that — preferably before the school year starts or at least early in the semester — parents, or someone else the student is close with, talk through what they might try to do to prevent sexual assault and what they would do if they were to become a victim, witness, or perpetrator of the crime.” Well, duh. Except that a reasonable expectation that while students live under their parents’ roofs, they will learn about consent is simply not the case; one report by the Avon Foundation suggests that “73% of parents with children under the age of 18 have not discussed sexual assault with them.”  

This is a failed moral calculus of staggering proportions. For victims of sexual assault, one of the most beautiful parts of the human experience is turned into a perverted denial of personal moral agency, almost always with life-altering consequences. 

Moral agency, sexual agency in particular, doesn’t nebulously begin sometime around freshman orientation. So why are we treating it like it does? Vox’s Ezra Klein summarized the issue well when he said that sexual assault prevention advocates are trying to “change a culture of sexual entitlement.”

But this change must come earlier, and we have a crucial role in making that happen. Campus leaders are uniquely positioned to provide much-needed political capital in the effort to make consent education the norm in middle and high school sex-ed classes. Currently there is a bill on the floor of the United States Congress, the Teach Safe Relationships Act of 2015, that does just that. It has all of four — yes, four — co-sponsors in the Senate. The bill’s advocates need us, and we need them. Time to start writing some letters.