As a 2021 graduate of the University of Southern Mississippi who has experienced the trauma of sexual assault both on and off campus, I know how important it is for survivors to feel safe at their collegiate institution. The absence of that support is why I founded the USM Sexual Assault Prevention Ambassadors—because I, like other people who have experienced this crime, felt alone and unsupported.
At USM, students have fought for years for a campus that upholds the safety and dignity of everyone. However, despite years of pressure from students starting in 2017 when I was a college freshman all the way to 2025, we are still seeing inadequate responses from USM to incidents of on-campus sexual violence.
As we continue our fight to hold the university accountable, I stand with current and former USM students to demand a zero-tolerance policy for all crimes of sexual violence.
At USM, students have been protesting for an end to sexual violence to promote a safer environment for all. They have turned to their Title IX office to demand that a zero-tolerance policy be put in place. Schools like the University of Houston have defined zero-tolerance policies as those with “no tolerance for sexual harassment and sexual violence, regardless of the sexual orientation or gender identity of individuals involved.” If someone violates this policy, their university will “impose serious sanctions on anyone who violates this policy.”
However, this is an uphill battle for students since zero-tolerance policies are currently not a mandate of the law.
Title IX, the federal law prohibiting sex-based discrimination and harassment in education, recently underwent significant revisions under the Trump administration. While President Trump’s Title IX policies do not include a zero-tolerance policy on sexual violence, having this policy is crucial for creating a safer campus environment. An Education Trust article criticized these new changes, stating that they “endanger women, girls, and survivors of sexual violence” by imposing more stringent rules when reporting campus sexual violence.
USM is not an institutional stranger to sexual-assault accusations or to protests on campus. In 2019, the potential hiring of Art Briles, who had been suspended then fired from Baylor University in 2016 after sexual-assault allegations, as USM’s offensive coordinator became a source of outrage for students, alums and fans. People held protests both in person on the Hattiesburg campus and on Twitter (now X) with people threatening to boycott football games and to revoke donor statuses. Due to this pressure, USM ended up choosing not to hire Briles.
In October 2021, another campus protest took place, advocating for a zero-tolerance policy after a video a USM student posted went viral about her sexual assault in 2017. Her case at USM ended in a guilty ruling from the Title IX office, and her assailant—another student—received a two-year suspension. However, he was allowed back on campus in 2021 without the survivor’s knowledge while she was still attending classes on campus. The survivor’s video and resilience in pushing for better protections for survivors inspired many other students to recount similar experiences in how USM mishandled their reports of sexual assault.
Many students began supporting the idea of a zero-tolerance policy, an effort that the Sexual Assault Prevention Ambassadors led. Administrators and students clashed during this time, and the protest became heavily documented in the news. However, the zero-tolerance policy advocacy died down after a few months and was not brought up again until 2025.
Frustration and focus on having a zero-tolerance policy returned to campus in February 2025, after the same student who led the protest in 2021 found out through social-media platforms that the Southern Miss Graphic Design department had praised her assailant and his accomplishments at the school. While USM has been unresponsive thus far to the multiple student protests on campus calling for the zero-tolerance policy’s implementation, students have felt empowered to continue this work to provide a safer campus for everyone.
Student activism plays an essential role in how college campuses make decisions. We have shown at USM that when you push institutions to be better, they may resist, but they sometimes respond with policies and procedures to put those changes in place.
Students deserve to feel safe when going to school, and students and alums have been leading the charge in ensuring that USM hears and respects that desire. A zero-tolerance policy would not stop sexual assault from happening on campus. However, it would ensure that if sexual violence occurs and an assailant is found guilty through the channels that are put in place by Title IX, that person would no longer be a part of the campus community. After years of advocacy, this is a policy that USM should implement immediately.
Although I have not been there in person to support these protests, my advocacy remains with the students who are constantly fighting for the rights of survivors. Somehow, four years after graduation, I still find ways to be present and fight through other advocates that never fail to bring me back to where my advocacy started.
This MFP Voices opinion essay reflects the personal opinion of its author(s). The column does not necessarily represent the views of the Mississippi Free Press, its staff or board members. To submit an opinion for the MFP Voices section, send up to 1,200 words and sources fact-checking the included information to voices@mississippifreepress.org. We welcome a wide variety of viewpoints.
