By Madelyn Stone, news correspondent 

Following a national wave of outcry against the way universities address sexual assault cases, two Northeastern students have started a campus branch of No More, a campaign to denounce rape and the culture that excuses it.

Rising sophomores Rowan Walrath and Alexis Stefano started No More at Northeastern with multiple goals in mind: to give sexual assault survivors a voice, provide community support and potentially reform university policy in dealing with rape cases.

“The original idea for the blog was to have it be a platform, so that other survivors who haven’t spoken out could have a chance to speak out about their experience at Northeastern. To see if the story was just one of many,” Walrath said.

On May 1, the US Department of Education released a list of 55 colleges and universities currently under investigation for mishandling cases of sexual assault and harassment complaints from students. Northeastern was not on the list.

Less than a week later, former Northeastern student Katie Rizzo filed a formal complaint with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights. She alleged Northeastern violated gender equity law Title IX, Title II of the Americans with Disabilities Act, as well as the Clery Act, a statute requiring colleges report instances of campus violence.

As The Newsreported last week, an OSCCR hearing found Rizzo’s alleged attacker guilty. He appealed the decision and its order of expulsion, then transferred schools in the time before the second hearing.

Walrath and Stefano said learning about Rizzo’s experience particularly bothered them. In the wake of an article published by Buzzfeed on May 7, they started brainstorming a way to address the issue.

“When Rizzo’s article went up, that sparked conversation and we wanted to be able to do something about that,” Walrath said. “Because we were like ‘Okay, well this is a terrible thing and we have student publications that are reporting on it, we have national publications that are reporting on it, but we don’t know what exactly we can do or whether Northeastern is going to do anything.’”

They created a website to serve as a platform for survivors to speak out about their sexual assault experiences. The No More at Northeastern site asks current and former students who have dealt with sexual assault, and the resulting administrative process, to share their stories.

“I am aware of the social connotation that comes with being a victim or a survivor,” Stefano said. “Personally, I’d like to see a change in mindset of how these people are treated and how the cases are handled, because I think that maybe the root of the problem is thinking that this isn’t a problem.”

Photo courtesy Ted Eytan, creative commons.