Story By: Bailey Ketcham

At Missouri Western, it’s on us to raise awareness to stop sexual assault, violence and misconduct on campus.

This is the idea Student Governor, Lionel Attawia, had for fall of 2014 when he started enforcing the nationwide campaign “It’s On Us” on Missouri Western’s campus.

President Barack Obama and Vice President Joe Biden launched the nationwide campaign in 2014. It focuses on raising awareness to help put an end to sexual assault on college campuses, and asks everyone across America to make a personal commitment to step out of the dark and start making a solution to stop sexual assault.

In the fall of 2014, Sen. Claire McCaskill came to speak to Missouri Western students with the initiative to stop sexual assault on college campuses. Her message spoke to Attawia, because later that semester, with the help of SGA and the Vice President of Student Affairs, Shana Meyer, he started putting together the “It’s On Us” campaign to be established throughout the Missouri Western campus.

“I got a call from The White House, it was a major conference call with Joe Biden,” Attawia said. “He was saying that it was a big deal and he was looking forward to seeing college campuses across the nation get onboard with it, and that’s when I thought that we had to do something.”

To get the word out about the campaign, Attawia teamed up with students Jeni Swope, Katelyn Canon and Brent Rosenauer to make a PSA involving a diverse group of people from every aspect on campus that wanted to support the campaign. The PSA was so popular, that it was submitted to the National Pinnacle College Media Awards where it won first place for Best PSA/Promo. Swope went down this past fall to the National College Media Convention in Austin, Texas to receive the award for her video.

“For my Advanced Video Journalism, class we had to make a PSA or a promo,” Swope said. “Katelyn was already producing the ‘It’s On Us’ campaign, so I contacted her and started working with her and Attawia on it.”

Along with using the PSA to get the word out, Attawia also started a pledge drive in the fall of 2015 in the Blum Student Union food court. Students could sign their name and email, and Attawia would send out an email to them to do the pledge on their own time. In order to make the pledge drive more fun and creative, students could also paint one of their fingernails to show that they support the campaign.

“I got a lot of good reactions and everyone seemed very excited and on board with the campaign; there was a sense of pride that some students really care,” Attawia said. “Since it was spreading from just focus on equality and scholarships with athletes, to there being more of a talk on sexual assault and preventing things on campus is when it became a really big deal and more exciting to students, staff and administrators.”

The campaign also goes along with the Title IX program that Meyer works with on campus to help provide students with a safe college campus. Meyer also started a poster campaign that involved posters that were put up around campus with altered lyrics to popular songs that went along with the campaign that students could relate to.

“This campaign is now a federal requirement, being mandated by the government to do something creates action,” Meyer said. “However, it seems to be something that the students have jumped on to the bandwagon and they want people to know that this is a safe campus and want to help be apart of that.”

The campaign has been successful across the country, and now with Attawia taking action, it’s been successful at Missouri Western and has given students a voice and chance to help keep the campus and community safe from sexual assault, violence and misconduct.

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