A shocking campaign is telling college students how likely they are to be raped
If they haven’t already, high school seniors will soon sign their letters of intent and prepare for their freshman years on college campuses across the country. One advertising campaign, designed by ad agency Goodby Silverstein & Partners, encourages those freshmen to hold their schools accountable to sexual assault allegations—by what could be considered jolting means.
Here’s a fake college acceptance letter the campaign posted in the Harvard student newspaper The Crimson, via Slate:
“We’re sorry that one of these memories will include being raped by someone you thought you could trust,” the fake letter in the ad reads. “You’ll fear him the night he presses you against a wall and every day after that.”
This letter, ThinkProgress writes, is just the beginning of a larger campaign:
The print ad is kicking off a bigger campaign, called “Unacceptable Acceptance Letters,” that plays off of the excitement surrounding the milestone of getting accepted to college. Other campaign materials include videos depicting the moment when prospective students open their acceptance letters — in the style of real acceptance videos that teens often post on social media — featuring young people gleefully reading lines like “You’ll be his third victim” and “They’ll only suspend him for one day, then you’re on your own!”Sexual assault and harassment continue to be major issues on college campuses; even at ostensibly progressive havens like UC Berkeley, victims of alleged sexual assault face a litany of challenges when reporting their cases.
Michael Rosen is a reporter for Fusion based out of Oakland.