Affirmative Consent App SaSie Provides Alternative Recourse for College Students
Roseburg, Oregon (PRWEB) September 01, 2016 -- The legal team at SaSie (SafeDateLLC) is proud to announce the launch of its free IOS consent app available at the app store. It provides relief to Title IX coordinators, sexual assault adjudicators, as well as being an alternative recourse for U.S. college students; victimized by sexual assault, and reluctant to use their school's channels for reporting.
Additionally, it is a digitally signed, and legally binding contract between two adults.
"Our affirmative consent app complies with campus consent policies in most states, and provides a legally binding modicum of evidence for students, and adjudicators, too. This evidence is often not there at all in sexual assault hearings on college campuses. It can be the critical difference in a situation where it’s often just one students word against another," explains SaSie’s CEO, Sam Hornreich; an attorney with an almost 40-year track record.
After a now infamous 2011 “Dear Colleague” letter was issued from the Office of Civil Rights, every college receiving federal United States funds was put on notice. This notice involved new dramatic policies, which required colleges to comply with strict administrative procedures pertaining to the handling, and reporting, of sexual assault cases. This action created huge increases in student lawsuits, which cost both colleges and students, who feel their cases were mishandled, a tremendous amount of money.
U.S. colleges are now under an enormous amount of federal pressure to beef-up the sexual assault numbers it is reporting as well, after a 2013 directive called the Clery Act was passed into law, that requires schools to provide more detailed reports on sexual assault, and intimate partner violence.
Despite this directive, in 2014, ninety-one percent of all U.S. colleges reported zero instances of rape, stalking, and harassment on their campuses. This number belies the numerous studies, which reveal that one in five women will be sexually assaulted in college. Likewise, almost one in four women will be the victim of intimate partner violence, forcible rape, stalking, cyber-stalking, or harassment.
This is a real legal mess that thousands of school administrators and students face every day. It has the ability to ruin lives, shut down schools, and dry up federal funding for both the institution, and any student attending there.
The SaSie legal team feels like this will have a particularly negative impact on marginalized student populations who may become more vulnerable to unjust prosecution as schools scramble to comply with Office of Civil Rights’ guidelines and directives.
Needless to say, despite the uptick in litigation, neither schools nor students are formally reporting sexual assault, in general. And, those students who do report find themselves facing the possibility of being ostracized by their peer groups and staff community, or being further victimized by their abusers and/or their social group. Thus, students cannot be blamed for not wanting to report sexual assault using official school channels, or rely on their college's administration to handle these situations impartially and effectively.
SaSie is an alternative solution for students who would rather take matters of consent and agency into their own hands, yet still be in compliance with their school's ethos and policies regarding affirmative consent.
Considering the significant legal and real-world risk students are assuming, by having sex at all, while enrolled in college, the SaSie consent app sends a strong message that consent is not a game. While casual sex may be OK in the minds of many college students, casual consent is not. This affirmative consent app reflects that dynamic perfectly.
More information can be found on Medium.com where SaSie maintains a consent publication called Only Yes.
Samuel Hornreich, Safedate LLC, http://sasie.date, +1 541-537-3837, [email protected]
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