This fall’s It’s On Us week is Oct. 14 to Oct. 18.

It’s On Us week was first brought to MSU through the Associated Students of Michigan State University, or ASMSU. Now, the MSU Prevention, Outreach and Education Department, or POE, also helps run and plan the events.

“I really like that we do a fall Week of Action and spring Week of Action because it allows us to engage students, staff and faculty in different ways throughout the different semesters,” POE Prevention Specialist Leah Short said. 

It’s On Us week includes various events on and off campus. 

A guest is often invited to campus for It’s On Us week to give a speech to the campus community. This year, “Orange is the New Black” star and transgender rights activist Laverne Cox was the keynote speaker.

“In best practices, it’s not productive to just have one big conversation about something like this and then never talk about it again, or talk about it once a year,” Short said. “Always having those conversations — and I think that the way we intentionally do two Weeks of Action each year reinforces that whole sentiment of wanting to make sure that people aren’t just remembering once a year to think about this — that this is always something that they’re conscious of.”

With fundraisers, speeches, events focusing on artistic expression and more, Short said the campaign urges to create a conversation about sexual assault and sexual violence on campus beyond the mandatory Relationship Violence and Sexual Misconduct (RVSM) workshops. 

“I think it’s important that this campaign has a student voice and is centered around student voices and student needs because as a staff person I just help coordinate events and help coordinate the weekly meetings for the planning committee,” she said. “I think that student voice is crucial to have because y’all live the day to day life of students and we need that input to know what’s going on.”

Since its founding in 2014, 440,000 people have taken the It’s On Us pledge, promising to help create a culture of consent, bystander intervention and survivor support. 

For the 2019-20 academic year, more than 250 schools have registered college campus chapters.  

“I think we should always be having these conversations, not just here. I hope that people take the conversations and the events this week outside of campus on to their lives beyond college, out into the Lansing community, back to their homes,” Short said. “I think that needs to be a constant conversation, that, it may be difficult, it might be uncomfortable, but something I like to emphasize is that we need to lean into that discomfort because that is how we are ultimately going to see change.”

It’s On Us: Week of Action will return in the spring.