I think it's important that we show up. I think it's important that we communicate directly with all those working people.
I was really shocked after all of this talk about coal miners and all of this talk about Buy America, the Republicans and the House of Representatives gutted health care and pension protections for coal miners and removed the Buy America provision that had been put in the bill in a bipartisan basis.
I think Donald Trump can take major steps towards reassuring the American people that there can't even be appearance of impropriety for pay-to-play schemes under his administration.
I just think it's weird that Donald Trump wants to be an executive producer of a TV show while he's President of the United States. I agree with Newt Gingrich. He doesn't have to do that.
I think that I was just on the cusp of the generation that was beginning to really challenge some of the assumptions about the role of women and the role of men on campus.
Even though we know sexual assault is still dramatically underreported, I think women are much more empowered today than they used to be.
Some of the morays have held on. When I was in school, I remember asking the question, "Why is it that whenever I walk into a fraternity there's alcohol everywhere and there's no alcohol in a sorority? Why is it that sororities won't allow alcohol, but fraternities do? What is that?" You know, nobody had a really good answer, and that's kind of held on. It's one of the issues that's being examined now - the role of alcohol in sexual assault.
What is most heartbreaking to me is the young women who don't report [being raped] because they were drinking, and they feel like it was their fault that they were drinking. I mean, that is so common.
You can be a victim of a crime and not exercise great judgment. And when women have been sexually assaulted, they feel like they have to have been perfect in order to have anybody believe them. They think nobody will believe them unless a stranger jumped out from behind a bush with a knife - not that they got too drunk and that a guy they thought they knew, you know, took advantage of them in a physical, assaultive way.
Universities simply unable to play judge, jury and executioner when they're already having trouble playing educator. Resources are limited and colleges must put their focus on their primary objective: education.
The goal is not to just have rapists expelled from schools. I don't want rapists transferring schools. I don't want them out there, being able to commit these crimes. I want them to go to prison. But if you understand this crime and you understand what happens in the reporting of this crime and the support that a victim does or does not get, you realize that our legislation increases the likelihood that a young woman will go to the police in a timely manner and that the police will investigate and that they will be able to administer real justice in the criminal system.
The notion that the campus has its hands tied if a woman is not willing to go to the police, if the woman is only willing to go so far as, "I just don't want to see him in my dorm anymore," is ridiculous. If that's as far as she's willing to go, then we need to accommodate that. And a university needs to be able to accommodate it.
I want to compliment the fraternity and sorority organizations for taking the time to meet with us and then removing their support from the legislation that would have been so counterproductive for a goal that I think we all share - and that is making campuses safer and the successful prosecution of people who commit serious crimes. So, good on them that they backed off, and we don't have to fight them.
There are people who have legitimate concerns about false accusations and the impact that can have on a young person's life when they have been falsely accused. Kirsten [Gillibrand] and I are not unaware that that is an issue we need to be concerned about, and that's why we have made changes in the legislation to address not just the rights of the victim, the accuser, but also of the accused.
I believe that sexual assault - if this is possible - was even more underreported when I was in school.
