April 15, 2017
Former Vice President Joe Biden has a clear message for those who could play a role in stopping sexual assault.
In a recent interview with Teen Vogue published Friday, Biden talked more about his work toward ending sexual assault on college campuses across the nation, calling bystanders who don't stop sexual assault when they see it happening "cowards."
He said:
"...bystanders who see something happen, in my view, if they don't holler, scream, pick up the phone and call and intervene, they are complicitous in the commission of a crime. They are complicitous. Look, if you see a brother taking a drunk freshman coed up the stairs to his room and you do nothing, you're a coward. You are a coward. You have an obligation to step up. You know that she's not able to give consent. And so, I went on campuses, we put together this program, and more than 400,000 people have signed the pledge to intervene. That's how you change attitudes — get a critical mass of people beginning to speak out so that the attacker or the bystander is the pariah, not the woman being assaulted, whether she's drunk or sober."
Biden, alongside former President Barack Obama, helped launch the "It's On Us" campaign in 2014, a national effort to spread awareness helping to end sexual assault in colleges.
During the interview, which comes during Sexual Assault Awareness Month, Biden also called the issue of sexual harassment across campuses a "cultural problem."
"We're trying to let young men understand that without consent, meaning saying yes, it is OK to touch me, yes it is OK to pull me into this bed, yes it is OK to have intercourse with me, then it is not consent," he said. "If a young woman is drunk, SHE CANNOT CONSENT. She cannot consent, and it's rape. It's rape. It's rape. It's rape. I wanted them to see because it's clear what the subtext is."
Since leaving the White House, Biden has been named the Benjamin Franklin Presidential Practice Professor at the University of Pennsylvania, where he'll lead the Penn Biden Center for Diplomacy and Global Engagement.
While the center will be based in Washington, D.C., he will also have an office at Penn's campus in University City.
Read Biden's full interview with Teen Vogue here.
