Dear Next President,

One in five women. You might think this is how many women get a form of cancer, or how many women have blond hair, or have grey eyes. Unfortunately, that is not what that number stands for. One in five women and one in ten men get sexually assaulted while in college, and honestly, that number is a conservative estimate.

I believe that one of the biggest issues that needs to be addressed is the horrifically high amounts of sexual assaults that happen in our country, more specifically our colleges. I know that some could argue that other countries are worse so we aren’t that bad, but I don’t believe that is the right mindset to have. Yes, America does treat women better than other countries, but we still don’t treat them right.

Ask any women you know, and either themselves or someone close to them has been sexually assaulted, and in most cases, the perpetrator never goes to jail. However, I think that the biggest task for you in the next four years is to break down rape culture. Rape Culture is defined as “the ways in which society blamed victims of sexual assault and normalized male sexual violence” by WAVAW (women against violence against women). This toxic culture is running rampart throughout our country and our college campuses, so we can’t get rid of it now can we?

Yes, yes we can; you can as the next president. We need to change the way we teach about sex and sexual violence, we need to support victims and most importantly, we need to reteach men and women who have fallen victim to rape culture. We need to work with them to unlearn the behaviors that they have been taught are acceptable and we need to do so kindly and lovingly. As this is a problem drastically affecting college campuses, a place of education, I think correcting those mindsets is something we can accomplish.

While I know there are many issues plaguing our country, I believe that stopping rape culture and working to keep more women and men safe is towards the top of that list.