More than a year after Chancellor Patrick Gallagher declared that sexual violence “has no place” at Pitt, Vice President Joe Biden formally joined the University’s fight.
Biden visited campus Tuesday to promote the It’s On Us campaign, which President Obama launched in September 2014 to end sexual assault on college campuses. His stop at Pitt is part of a three-campus tour of college campuses to promote the initiative.
Biden’s speech comes after Pitt’s It’s On Us campaign released its paper chain project and about six months after Pitt released the results of its 2015 Campus Climate Survey on Sexual Assault and Sexual Misconduct. The survey revealed that 21 percent of female Pitt undergraduates and 6.2 percent of their male counterparts experienced nonconsensual penetration or sexual touching during college.
The It’s On Us campaign at Pitt collected more than 4,200 pledges from students, faculty and staff in the form of an 800 foot paper chain, which it revealed in late February.
Biden took the stage in the main lobby of the Petersen Events Center at 12:40 p.m., after Gallagher, Mayor Bill Peduto and Gov. Tom Wolf introduced him. Students eager to hear his message began lining up as early as 9 a.m.
Biden described the victim-blaming tendencies of the American legal system before it was reformed.
“What difference does it make what a woman was wearing?” Biden asked.
At the talk, Biden called for a paradigm shift for how society views sexual assault.
“Think of the courage it takes to say, ‘help me,’” Biden said. “[We need to] make the abuser the pariah and stop focusing on the woman.”