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"During my freshman year at the University of Southern California in 2010, I was raped by my new boyfriend after a holiday party soaked in jungle juice. I was told by my school and everyone else to &amp;quot;forget about it&amp;quot; and &amp;quot;move on.&amp;quot; Because we had been drinking earlier in the night and were a couple at the time, it was easy to label my rape a misunderstanding. No one knows how painful it is to share with the world that you were raped \u2014 no matter what the George Wills of the world think, rape victim is not a &amp;quot;coveted status.&amp;quot; More painful still is discovering that the reaction to the crime is dismissive. USC informed me that its response to rape by students was an &amp;quot;educative, not a punitive process&amp;quot; \u2014 even though in the past, students accused of rape have indeed been expelled. After what I believe was a farce of an investigation, USC dismissed my case. My rapist, who denies the charges against him, remained at school and later graduated without incident. (In a statement to Cosmopolitan, USC&amp;#039;s Division of Student Affairs said that it &amp;quot;takes all reports of sexual violence extremely seriously \u2026 In this case as in others, the university devoted considerable time and resources to its investigation.&amp;quot;) Being ignored after coming forward was devastating. I was afraid that my attacker would jump me on my way to class, so I holed up and stopped going. I was expected to just go away. And I almost did. In early 2012, I made plans to commit suicide. But first, I posted my rapist&amp;#039;s name to my blog to warn other women about him. There was an immediate (and life-saving) outpouring of support from people across the country. Now USC is among dozens of colleges (more than 64 at press time) facing federal investigations for alleged violations of Title IX and the Clery Act, laws that govern the treatment of sexual-assault survivors. Last year, I filed a federal complaint against USC for failing to handle the case of my assault properly. The investigation is ongoing. I believe the key to ending the college-rape epidemic is changing the &amp;quot;risk assessment&amp;quot; analysis made by some colleges that believe expelled rapists are more likely to sue them than ignored victims are and that the number of reported rapes needs to be low so that recruitment numbers will stay high. Colleges should give mandatory anonymous exit surveys to all graduates to gauge how administrations respond to student-on-student violence. Rape victims must continue to stand up and speak out. Let&amp;#039;s draw courage from the knowledge that our collective voices grow louder with every new survivor who rises up and joins the roar. Tucker Reed is a senior at USC and chairwoman of the nonprofit Student Coalition Against Rape (SCAR). This article was originally published as &amp;quot;I Spoke Out About Being Raped and Sparked a Movement&amp;quot; in the September 2014 issue of Cosmopolitan. Click here to subscribe to the digital edition! "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.cosmopolitan.com/college/a29841/university-of-southern-california-anti-rape-movement/>