--- title: Campus Sexual Assault: Obama Launches Public Awareness Campaign description: "It's On Us" will be aimed at changing campus culture canonical: https://time.com/3399438/obama-kerry-washington-sexual-assault-psa/ author: Eliza Gray article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2014-09-19T10:00:39.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-08-04T07:45:23.726Z article:section: Politics og:title: Campus Sexual Assault: Obama Launches Public Awareness Campaign og:description: "It's On Us" will be aimed at changing campus culture og:url: https://time.com/3399438/obama-kerry-washington-sexual-assault-psa/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4c705a9df28091f4/6986a29be8524b911c6049ce/president-barack-obama1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 2100 og:image:height: 1181 og:image:alt: Barack Obama og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Campus Sexual Assault: Obama Launches Public Awareness Campaign twitter:description: "It's On Us" will be aimed at changing campus culture twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4c705a9df28091f4/6986a29be8524b911c6049ce/president-barack-obama1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Kerry Washington and Jon Hamm Star in Sexual Assault Prevention PSA > Sponsored content. 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It explains the politics, personalities and power dynamics behind the headlines, twice a week. #### Where can I get analysis of Washington politics by email? D.C. Brief is TIME's free Washington politics newsletter, available at time.com/newsletters. It is written by a TIME senior correspondent who covers the capital full time. #### Who writes TIME's D.C. Brief? Philip Elliott, a senior correspondent at TIME, writes D.C. Brief. #### Is D.C. Brief free? Yes. D.C. Brief is free at time.com/newsletters. ### Sources * TIME Newsletters: [time.com/newsletters](/c/time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3/newsletters?i=c8cbd123-27cc-4555-856c-5fea8e85c6f3&cr=time-nl-dcbrief-2026q3-v1) ## Video: My Rapist Is Still on Campus: Sexual Assault in the Ivy League [Watch (HLS stream): My Rapist Is Still on Campus: Sexual Assault in the Ivy League](https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/o8izpqKu.m3u8) (6:50)  _Published 2014-05-14. In April, 23 Columbia and Barnard students filed a federal Title IX complaint alleging that the University mishandled sexual assault cases_ by [Eliza Gray](https://time.com/author/eliza-gray/) ## Eliza Gray Sep 19, 2014 10:00 AM UTC  President Barack Obama speaks at a news conference at the NATO summit at Celtic Manor, Newport, Wales, Sept. 5, 2014. President Barack Obama speaks at a news conference at the NATO summit at Celtic Manor, Newport, Wales, Sept. 5, 2014. Charles Dharapak—AP by [Eliza Gray](https://time.com/author/eliza-gray/) ## Eliza Gray Sep 19, 2014 10:00 AM UTC President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden will announce a new public awareness and education campaign Friday designed to change the culture on college campuses and prevent [sexual assault](http://time.com/100542/the-sexual-assault-crisis-on-american-campuses/) before it happens. The campaign is the next phase in the White House’s multi-pronged effort to reduce the rate of sexual assault on campuses and to support survivors. The campaign, called “It’s On Us,” will be aimed at changing the culture by inspiring every person on a college campus to take action, big or small, to prevent sexual assault. The campaign’s first public service announcement, which features President Obama and Vice President Biden and celebrities like Kerry Washington, Jon Hamm, and Connie Britton, will air on Saturday on the big screens in several college football stadiums during games. Though senior White House officials declined to give further details of the PSA during a call with reporters, the White House said the campaign would be particularly focused on getting young men involved. That theme began with a PSA the White House launched in April called “1 is 2 Many,” featuring male celebrities like Steve Carell and Daniel Craig. The campaign will draw from a popular trend in sexual assault prevention: bystander intervention, a public awareness and training philosophy that encourages members of the community to intervene when they see sexual violence about to happen. Many colleges have adopted such training programs on campus, and a recent [CDC report ](http://time.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/evidence-based-strategies-for-the-prevention-of-sv-perpetration.pdf)found that bystander intervention has great potential to drive change. “The campaign reflects a belief that sexual assault isn’t just an issue involving a crime committed by a perpetrator against a victim, but one in which the rest of us also have a role to play,” the White House said. In addition to the PSA, with the help of the liberal think tank Center for American Progress, private companies, collegiate sports organizations like the NCAA, and the student body leadership from 200 colleges and universities, many different platforms will carry the logo and the “It’s On Us” message. To get the word out further, Electronic Arts, a leading video gaming company, will carry the “It’s On Us” message to its players, Viacom will promote the “It’s On Us” message through its online properties, including MTV, VH1, and BET, and popular media personalities will create “It’s On US” content and promote it on their platforms. The White House efforts will also include recommendations for three new best practices for colleges and universities to improve their sexual assault response, such as model policy information to include in their sexual misconduct policies. The Department of Justice’s Office on Violence Against Women will also award over $6 million to 18 colleges with grants to develop sexual assault response and prevention programs. ## Transcript My name is Emma [ UNKNOWN ]. I am a junior at Columbia college. I am a visual arts major. On the first day of my sophomore year, I was raped by a fellow classmate. I didn't report at first because. It's a big emotional trauma, and I didn't feel like dealing with it at first, until I met at that time, two other women who told me the same person who had assaulted me, had assaulted them. The school found a way to dismiss each of our three cases separately. [ MUSIC ] My rapist, it still goes to my school, and still is on campus. [ MUSIC ]. This is not a single campus issue. This is not an individual issue. This is a cultural problem. We have a huge issue with rape culture on all college campuses. There was a study that was done that shows that men on college campuses who are perpetrators. Are more often than not repeat offenders. The average number of people a perpetrator will sexually assault is six, according to this study. So this isn't a random phenomenon. This isn't this happens in an alley, this happens when everyone's incredibly drunk at a party. There is a certain profile for what sexual assault looks like on a college campus. And that is why we need administrators to be open, and transparent, about that. Right now, their approach seems to be to ignore the problem, to try to deny students access to resources, to deny that that's happening at all when it fact they really should be getting in front of the issue. Our hearing took place seven months after I reported the incident. The investigator in my case didn't take down many important things such as the position I was in when he raped me. My hearing panelists weren't even trained, one woman kept asking me how it was physically possible for anal rape to happen. Why Columbia didn't find him responsible? I don't actually get to write a statement of what happened. It's all the investigator's statement that they read. There's an office called the Office of Gender Based and Sexual Misconduct. You go in there and at that time a woman was working there so I told her what had happened. She was the one who took erroneous notes, and missed really important that I said. Since her statement didn't make any sense, my case didn't make any sense. I think another reason that the school didn't find him guilty was that they, they really didn't want to treat it as a serial rape case because we, all three of us reported, and then they would say you are not allowed to mention each others' cases, we are going to treat them separately. I think that. If the hearing panel have had known that this was a serial offender, they might have believed us more maybe? They also said that there was not enough evidence to determine that it was more likely than not. That the respondent engaged in behavior that met the de, definition of sexual assault. So the charge was dismissed. [ MUSIC ] There are many reasons why a student would choose to not go to the police, and go to, you know, a campus adjudication process. Many people don't want the outcome to be the person that attacked them to go to jail. If you're a person of color. Or if you're ****, the process of going to the police can also be one that is not necessarily competent or great to deal with. Some people seek out resources from their school in order to make sure they're not living in the same dorm as a person who assaulted them, which is very different from making sure that someone goes to jail. And I also think that improving processes on campus across the board. Including you know, therapy for survivors, adequate rape crisis centers, and adequate academic interim measures, are things that are important for everyone to have the police absolutely cannot give you when you're a student. Everyday I'm afraid of leaving my room. Even seeing people who remotely look like my rapist is a scary thing for me. Last semester, I was working in the dark room in the photography department. Which is a small dark room. He asked permission from his teacher to come and work in the darkroom during my class. I started crying and hyperventilating and. As long as he's on campus with me he can continue to harass me. They're setting up for graduation for all of the seniors and all of the bleachers are coming up on campus. And, I was just thinking about the fact that. Because of what the administration did, I'm going to have to be sitting on those bleachers with my rapist and a serial rapist at that. Knowing that he's going to get the same education as me and I'll be feeling horrible on my graduation day. A lot of students think that when they go to a campus, if they see that there are zero sexual assaults reported that that's a really positive thing, that, that must mean that campus is incredibly safe, it's going to be a great place. But actually when you consider the fact that the overall rates of sexual assaults on campus are as high as one in four, if you see a campus reporting zero sexual assaults that should actually be a red flag. [ MUSIC ] I feel like it's taken over my entire, entire college experience. This happened on the first day of my sophomore year. And here I am. I just finished my last day of school for my junior year. And I'm still talking about it and still thinking about it. And I know that I'm going to look back on my entire Columbia experience and see that's how the administration has failed me. and. It's, it's like a cloud that will always hang over me. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/3399438/obama-kerry-washington-sexual-assault-psa/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/3399438/obama-kerry-washington-sexual-assault-psa/"},"headline":"Kerry Washington and Jon Hamm Star in Sexual Assault Prevention PSA","datePublished":"2014-09-19T10:00:39.000Z","dateModified":"2026-08-04T07:45:23.726Z","description":"The \"It's On Us\" spot was produced by the White House and will air during college football games this weekend.","url":"https://time.com/3399438/obama-kerry-washington-sexual-assault-psa/","keywords":["White House","Living","Sexual Assault","President Obama","campus sexual assault"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4c705a9df28091f4/6986a29be8524b911c6049ce/president-barack-obama1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Eliza Gray","jobTitle":null,"url":"https://time.com/author/eliza-gray/"}],"articleSection":"Politics","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4c705a9df28091f4/6986a29be8524b911c6049ce/president-barack-obama1.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"Barack Obama","caption":"President Barack Obama speaks at a news conference at the NATO summit at Celtic Manor, Newport, Wales, Sept. 5, 2014.","creditText":"Charles Dharapak—AP","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/politics/","name":"Politics"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/white-house/","name":"White House"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/3399438/obama-kerry-washington-sexual-assault-psa/","name":"Kerry Washington and Jon Hamm Star in Sexual Assault Prevention PSA"}}]},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"VideoObject","name":"My Rapist Is Still on Campus: Sexual Assault in the Ivy League","description":"In April, 23 Columbia and Barnard students filed a federal Title IX complaint alleging that the University mishandled sexual assault cases","thumbnailUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/v2/media/o8izpqKu/poster.jpg?width=720","uploadDate":"2014-05-14T14:51:05.000Z","contentUrl":"https://cdn.jwplayer.com/manifests/o8izpqKu.m3u8","embedUrl":"https://time.com/3399438/obama-kerry-washington-sexual-assault-psa/","duration":"PT6M50S","potentialAction":{"@type":"SeekToAction","target":"https://time.com/3399438/obama-kerry-washington-sexual-assault-psa/?jw_start={seek_to_second_number}","startOffset-input":"required name=seek_to_second_number"}}] ```