May 7, 2014

Question of the Week: “What do you think of President Obama’s initiative on sexual assaults on college campuses and how important is it locally?”

TT Mengi Xu

“I do think that this federal initiative is extremely important, given the recent news and the sort of anecdotes that have been reported in campus newspapers, but I also think that things need to come from the bottom up. More conversations need to come from the students and more people need to be able to feel they can have candid conversations about this topic. The federal initiative helps by putting the issue more on the radar, but students should not be afraid to step forward and tell their stories.”

—Mengyi XU, Chicago, PU Class of 2014

TT pranav Gokhaly“I think that President Obama’s initiative is a really great step forward in addressing a problem that persists on all college campuses and it’s important that Princeton is taking steps and that the government is as well.”—Pranav Gokhale, Germantown, Md., PU Class of 2015

TT Justin Ziegler“I hadn’t heard of this initiative previously. I know that it’s a problem on Princeton’s campus and I’m really glad that the government is taking steps to prevent it. I think it’s something that the University as a whole has to consider and to figure out how to deal with the repercussions of sexual assaults and also to try to prevent them.”—Justin Ziegler, Leonia, N.J., PU Class of 2016

 
TT henry Whitaker

“I don’t know that much about the sexual assault initiative that Obama is taking. But it’s something that is not always easily talked about by people. I just read that almost 60 percent of sexual assaults go unreported. I think it’s important to provide an environment where people are comfortable confronting this type of problem.”

—Henry Whitaker, Annapolis, Md., PU Class of 2017