Sexual assault education is the most important topic taught at Glenbrook North, and students need to treat it as so.

A December 2014 report from the U.S. Department of Justice stated that 20 percent of females in college are sexually assaulted. It doesn’t matter where you grew up or how you were raised or what school you go to.

If you are a girl and if you go to college, there is a 20 percent chance you will be sexually assaulted.

The responsibility of preventing this falls on students.

According to Mike English, a health instructor in the Physical Education department, the sexual education unit in Health, which all sophomores are required to take, is about two weeks long. Part of the sexual assault unit consists of the Clothesline Project, which is a display set up once a semester of T-shirts illustrated with hand-written stories of sexual assault.

Students’ silence throughout the presentation is evidence that they take it seriously at the time, but silence is not nearly enough.

Sexual assault education is the most important topic taught at GBN because it is the only topic that urgently applies to everyday life in college. Knowing the Pythagorean Theorem is nice, and forgetting it is unfortunate for a test, but when students forget about the Clothesline Project, girls are sexual assaulted.

It’s also important to consider that in the report, 97 percent of perpetrators are male. Because boys are a bigger problem than girls, boys need to take their sexual assault education just as seriously, if not more seriously, than girls. Boys need to remember their education every day.

The alcohol and drug aspects of sexual assault are also too important to forget. The report states that 47 percent of offenders were perceived to be drunk during the assault. Alcohol and drugs cannot be blamed for the actions of people, but intoxication is certainly a problem.

The school can consider having seniors, as well as sophomores, participate in the Clothesline Project, but the responsibility of preventing sexual assault falls on the students. GBN does its part in teaching students about sexual assault.

It’s the students who need to realize the importance of their education before it’s too late.