It's On Us and College Humor Call Out College Masculinity

Recently, the It's On Us campaign teamed up with the popular YouTube Channel, College Humor, to create a PSA that would bring awareness to violence against women on college campuses; an issue that, while not new, has recently been given more attention and concern by the media. The It's On Us initiative was launched in 2014 by President Obama in order to spread awareness and try to prevent sexual assaults on college campuses. The initiative urges individuals to take the pledge to:

1. Recognize that non-consensual sex is sexual assault.
2. Identify situations in which sexual assault may occur 
3. Intervene in situations where consent has not or cannot be given 
4. Create an environment in which sexual assault is unacceptable and survivors are supported

The initiative has recently gained momentum, and has done a relatively good job of reaching its target audience; a task that could be daunting and difficult seeing as we live in a time in which young individuals have so much entertainment to choose from. What I liked about this particular video is that I believe it does a really good job of poking fun and deconstructing the idea of the typical college male, or expected college masculinity and behavior. The group of friends are hanging out in what is staged as a stereotypical 'man cave' drinking alcohol, watching sports and joking around, but this quickly falters as they address the killer bear in the house. The bear is a literal manifestation of the statistic that states that 1 in 5 women will be sexually assaulted by the time they finish college. Instead one of the men state that the bear will 'statistically' only kill 1 in 5 people, but not them. He goes on to state that whatever happens is none of his business, further mocking how many men treat the prevalence of sexual assault by taking the path of least resistance. Like the A Call To Men campaign, It's On Us and this particular PSA are calling for men to take responsibility for violence against women.

I feel as though the PSA was very relatable for the target audience and did a good job of putting it in a way that will make many college males realize that it does concern them, and can even happen to them. While it's not perfect, I hope to see more PSAs like it and hopefully even commercials that could potentially make it to television.