The Sex Lives of College Kids

Okay, this story is worth spending some time with because it really captures all the barriers to accountability we've been talking about.

Let's start with one young woman from this high school in North Carolina, Nikki.

When Nikki was 15, she got a text from her then boyfriend saying he had a gun in his backpack, and if she didn't meet him after school, he'd shoot himself in the head.

When she met him, she told Carter, he walked her into the woods and raped her.

The next day, Nikki reported the incident to a high school official who contacted the boy's family, which led the boy to send Nikki threatening texts.

Nikki then went to the principal, who warned her that if her story didn't check out, she could be suspended for having sex on campus.

And so Nikki didn't file a formal report, but she did frequently miss school and have flashbacks.

Four years later, Nikki came across a story in the news about another young woman, a Jane Doe, who had filed a lawsuit against the same school district for violating her Title IX rights.

Like Nikki, this woman had said she had been raped in the woods near their school, and administrators had dismissed her complaint.

Nikki then filed her own lawsuit, and another young woman came forward, Serena.

Serena said she had been raped in one of the school's bathrooms, and she had also been warned that she could be suspended if her story couldn't be corroborated.

Story after story came out.

Story after story was dismissed.

So Serena and Nikki took their stories to a school board meeting, which Carter attended.

They and their allies were sharing stories of sexual violence in the school district, and one of the members of the board told them that due to procedural reasons, they could not keep sharing those stories.

And they felt very much silenced, and there was screaming and yelling, and pandemonium broke out.

Because why?

Just 'cause people were really angry that they were being silenced.

And people said, you know, "Let them speak.

Let them talk." And, you know, I was, I was covering this for, um, a documentary actually that we were making at, at the publication where I worked at the time.

And so, you know, these young girls who were speaking, like, they were mic'd up.

And our camera woman could hear their hearts beating through the microphone.

[gasps]

Like, it, it...

They were so worked up, and I was so worked up, that, like, it was just...