One in five women on Chico State’s college campus will be a victim of rape or attempted rape over the course of a five-year college career, according to the Gender & Sexuality Equity Center. One woman is too much, but in five years, over 15,000 women at Chico State will experience sexual assault.

These statistics are part of why GSEC has come out with a three-part video series on consent titled “Consent: It’s Required.” Emilee Hunt, the women’s program coordinator at GSEC, sat down with The Orion to explain why the video is so important.

The Orion: How did the idea of the video originate?

Hunt: We wanted a form of consistent programming around consent, that was freely accessible, as a short-term effort to be involved in the issue of consent. It was the staff that thought about the idea of a video first, and then I took it to the women’s program interns and they got the ball rolling.

Why is it important for students at Chico State to see the video?

I think it is really important that we start a conversation about consent. We are a college campus and the rates of sexual assault are just higher here. Statistically, if you have completed a semester here, you will never sit in a class without a survivor of sexual assault in your class. A lot of my peers are like, “Well how do I ask for consent? Is it like signing a contract? Is it going to mess up the moment if you are like, ‘Oh here, can you sign this?’” The answer is no, that is not the way that it is.

What does the video focus on?

In the video, we wanted to stress that each sexual act is an individual act, and that also there are ways you can work it into sex. There is nothing worse than raping someone, so I feel like you should take the risk of it being slightly uncomfortable the first few times and ask for consent.

How is the video going to be published?

The video is going to be a social media blast. The goal is to have it on the Chico State homepage, email it out to all students, have (resident adviser’s) show it, multiple professors have emailed me. Our whole contact list will get it. We also are going to use Twitter, Facebook, all of social media.

Why is this video important to watch?

I think that this video is really important and everyone should watch it. It is going to take six minutes of your time to make sure you understand the concepts of consent so that you know how to support people and don’t sexually assault somebody, so it is well worth your time.

Here is part one of the consent video. Parts two and three can also be found on GSEC’s YouTube page.

Michaela Sundholm can be reached at [email protected] or @Michaela_Sun on Twitter.