Students have fought sexual violence for years. They want to know when universities will care.

Keyanna Foster talks about sexual violence on her campus almost as if it were a class she started preparing for the moment she applied to college. Girls often hear stories of campus assaults while they are still in high school, she said.

Foster entered Louisiana State University (LSU) knowing about 19-year-old Madison Brooks, a sophomore who was fatally struck by a car after she was reportedly raped by multiple men near an off-campus bar. That same year, Foster said, some of her friends were also drugged or assaulted. For many women, the anticipation of violence has become part of the college experience.

“I think the best way to describe it is kind of like rumbling a little bit in the background,” Foster said. “You kind of always hear a little bit of something.”

Now in her senior year, Foster, the secretary of LSU’s Tigers Against Sexual Assault, a student-led group, is watching parallel stories unfold. 

On September 14, LSU student Kendall Francis posted a now-viral TikTok video alleging she was raped by an LSU football player in October 2025. “I really just wanted to bring awareness upon this situation because I’m just dealing with a lot right now,” Francis says in the video, shared more than 30,000 times. “I think that this story needs to be heard.”

Two days later, a former Cornell University student, identified in court papers as Jane Doe, filed a civil lawsuit detailing allegations that she had been plied with alcohol and drugs and repeatedly raped by several men during a multi-hour attack at a fraternity house in 2024. 

The cases have reignited widespread outrage and a national debate about the pervasiveness of rape culture on college campuses. Survivors and student advocates are once again grappling with how to fight against sexual violence when they feel school officials and the government are failing to act.

“I think that students trust these institutions to protect their safety and protect them, and parents trust these institutions to protect their children. And all they have done, time and time and time and time again, is let the students down, and especially women,” said George Washington University (GW) senior Brianna Santoro, who is a co-president for GW’s chapter of It’s On Us, a national nonprofit program focused on sexual assault prevention.

Momentum against campus sexual misconduct surged during the early 2010s, after high-profile complaints against elite universities ignited public demands to improve the response from schools and the federal government. In 2011, the Education Department clarified in official guidance that on-campus assault and harassment are forms of sex discrimination prohibited under Title IX.

But Title IX regulations can change substantially depending on the presidential administration, creating a moving goalpost for survivors seeking justice.

Late last month, the Education Department formally reinstated Title IX regulations issued in 2020 during President Donald Trump’s first term, replacing a rule adopted under former President Joe Biden that broadened the range of sexual harassment complaints schools must investigate.

Organizations fighting campus sexual violence have long criticized the Trump administration’s rule, saying it has made reporting misconduct more difficult and relies on procedures, like courtroom-style live hearings and cross-examinations, which can retraumatize survivors.

“We can really connect the dots between these attacks on survivors’ rights and what is going on at Cornell and what is going on at LSU — and those are just some of the cases we know about,” said Emma Grasso Levine, senior manager of Title IX policy at Know Your IX, a survivor-led project against sexual, dating and gender-based violence in schools. “There’s also plenty of cases where folks may experience something just as horrific and don’t report it because they’ve lost so much faith in not only Title IX, but the government or their school to protect them.”

Santoro knows what it’s like to live in fear of sharing details of the assault she endured in high school. After a boy from a neighboring school assaulted her, she did not tell anyone for two years, she said.

She described the community where she grew up in Rhode Island as “pretty politically unequipped.” Her Indian mother and Italian father both have conservative views, and her family did not talk openly about sex and relationships, she said. At GW, she joined her campus chapter of It’s On Us, and found a space to “just be around people who know how to have an educated conversation and a trauma-informed conversation,” she said. 

The chapter launched in 2024 as a way to fill gaps in resources at GW, the chapter’s founder, Zoe Larkey, told the student newspaper at the time. It’s now one of more than 250 campus chapters under an initiative launched by President Barack Obama in 2014. 

Santoro is a current co-president for GW’s chapter and is using a combination of social media posts and in-person events to capture the attention of more students. It’s On Us GW provides trainings to student organizations — including fraternities, sororities and sports teams — education on different forms of sexual violence, what bystander intervention can look like and the Title IX complaint process.

The group has also organized panel discussions and an annual 5K race to raise awareness. This year, it hosted the Partners in Prevention Summit, sponsored by the national branch to champion support for survivors of sexual assault.

But even with these efforts, Santoro said, school administrators fall short when it comes to treating survivors’ cases with urgency. On one hand, survivors say delayed action forces students into silence. But in the social media era, it also compels them to share their stories and connect with others in digital spaces. 

“Over time, the platforms and tactics have changed, but the fundamental exercise of power is familiar: Students are refusing to allow institutions to become the only narrator of what is happening on campus,” said Kenyora Lenair Johnson, CEO of End Rape on Campus, a nonprofit that works to end sexual violence at colleges and universities nationwide.

“We can’t keep building momentum on the backs of survivors and then allowing that momentum to disappear when their stories leave the news cycle,” Johnson added. “To me, that’s the challenge right now. Not whether we know what the problem is — we actually know very much what the problem is. The question is whether institutions and policymakers are willing to sustain the work when nobody is watching.”

Complaints from both Francis and Doe allege insufficient action by their universities to address the severity of the harm they experienced. A Title IX panel at Cornell expelled two of Doe’s alleged assailants after they were found liable for sexual assault, according to The New York Times. Two other men were suspended and made to write reflection papers, and another two were not found liable for assault. The seventh student graduated before the panel made its determination.

LSU’s Office of Civil Rights and Title IX found Francis’ alleged attacker, a defensive end for the university football team, responsible for “forcible rape,” and suspended him for a year. He appealed and got his punishment reduced to four semesters of probation. LSU coach Lane Kiffin told reporters in August that the player is not practicing with the team.

Foster, the Tigers Against Sexual Assault secretary, as well as the group’s president, LSU senior Sofia Murray, said the student body has not received an official statement from the university concerning Francis’ allegations.

Murray, herself a survivor of sexual violence, said she recently saw a photograph of the player accused of attacking Francis still displayed alongside other LSU football players inside a nearby Raising Cane’s restaurant. “Seeing his face hit me as if I know him or something,” she said. “Just from knowing what he did to that girl, seeing his face … it did create a reaction.”

Reading the details of what happened to Francis and Doe, and seeing those accused of assault go on without reprimand from the university has felt overwhelming at times, Foster said. One night last week, she was scrolling on her phone, seeing post after post about Cornell, about Francis — seeing people sharing their own stories of being a Jane Doe. She broke down crying, she said. 

“A lot of this stuff is very triggering,” Foster said. “There’s so many organizations out there that do so much for women and advocate for survivors. And still, when you ask women, and just people in general that have experienced sexual violence, it does kind of feel like we’re stuck.”

Murray said she spent two school years working to keep Tigers Against Sexual Assault alive without a full student board. This year they are back in full swing, she said. The recent cases have prompted organizations at the university to reach out to them to partner on events they are planning for the fall, including a “Run for Her” awareness event, a self-defense class and a joint meeting with a campus fraternity. It gives her hope that their advocacy can reach new audiences.

The widespread demand for material changes to campus culture often ebbs and flows with the news cycle. As Rachel Newman, a junior at the University of Florida, put it, “It’s definitely frustrating to see this kind of collective forgetting of what, as survivors, we can’t forget.”

Newman was a freshman at New College of Florida in the fall of 2022 when she says she was raped in her sleep by a classmate whom she had previously considered a friend. She reported the assault to campus police officers, who contacted the university’s Title IX office, triggering an investigation that the school ultimately dropped after Newman’s attacker unenrolled.

Newman left New College in 2023 following pressure from administration officials to withdraw and a worsening eating disorder requiring medical treatment, she said. “It was really a taxing situation,” Newman said of the assault and its aftermath. “It took a lot from me.”

Now 22, Newman is working toward finishing her bachelor’s degree in psychology. She hopes to attend law school and someday work professionally as an advocate against gender-based discrimination and violence. In the meantime, she has been educating other students about their Title IX rights through Know Your IX and working full-time at a local domestic violence center.

Newman sees parts of her own story reflected in Jane Doe’s, who was also attacked by someone she thought she could trust and later left school.

“It’s great to see that people are rightfully enraged by it,” Newman said of Doe’s case. “But, on the other hand, it’s like, this has been happening. I’m just concerned that this outrage won’t last.”