The following piece, written by the editorial editors, reflects the majority opinion of the editorial board.
It's on us - a simple phrase with complex implications. It might sound familiar, as it's the name of a nationwide campaign to raise sexual assault awareness and encourage increased responsibility of college studentsin particular.
Miami has it's own It's On Us campaign, it's Twitter account was founded in October 2014. According to the Miami University website, this campaign was supposed to kick off in Fall 2014 and then again at the beginning of February.
So why have we not heard anything about this? Why has the Twitter account been inactive? There are no signs of activity on campus - no fliers in King Cafe or sheet signs near The Hub. For all we know, the campaign isn't happening at all.
The editorial board sees this as a problem, but we don't necessarily place the blame on the people in charge of It's On Us or on the university.
The name itself should clue us in: it is on us. We shouldn't have to wait for a national campaign to arrive on campus in order to spur us to become responsible human beings. We shouldn't need the university to install sexual assault trainings in order for rape to not happen in Oxford. To put it simply - all of this should be common sense, right?
Nationwide, one in five women are targets of sexual assault according to a study by the U.S. Department of Justice.
This fall, we saw how much Miami students in particular care about the victims of sexual assault when faculty and students joined together to protest George Will, a guest speaker and columnist who has spoken out against sexual assault victims in the past.
As a campus, we seem to be well aware that sexual assault is a problem in our lives and we also seem to be passionate enough to want to find a solution.
We at The Miami Student believe that we, as not just a student body, but as a community, need to come together in order to solve the problem of sexual assault on our campus.
Of course, friends should keep a close watch on friends while out and about at bars and parties - this is common sense. We know the usual warnings of keeping an eye on our drinks and walking home in groups. But what about the other side of the spectrum?
Make Miami a place that simply does not tolerate sexual assault. Instead of girls needing to keep an eye on drinks at parties, why don't the people making the drinks universally know that drugging party guests is not socially or morally acceptable? Shouldn't the women of Miami feel comfortable asking anyone to walk them home, or be able to walk home alone, without fear that they could be assaulted?
Perhaps this is slightly idealistic or naive of us on the editorial board, but it really shouldn't be. We shouldn't feel nervous when we want to go to a bar and have fun with our friends, and we definitely shouldn't need to carry pepper spray in our purses for a five minute walk across campus.
We would love for the It's On Us campaign to start becoming prominent on campus, but perhaps we should take a lesson from its name and place the responsibility on ourselves to prevent sexual assault on campus.
Rather than waiting for the university to make sexual assault trainings mandatory for all students, we should work to make Miami safe just by being good people. It doesn't matter if someone is your best friend or a complete stranger, we all have the responsibility of taking care of one another.
We proclaim "love and honor" wherever we go, so let's make it mean something more. Love and honor each other - make Miami a safe place. It's On Us, all of us.