The zone lasts anywhere from 6-10 weeks. 

Ten weeks is 70 days, 70 days is 1860 hours, 1860 hours is 100,800 minutes and so forth. 

It’s the same length as your typical summer internship, study-abroad program, extended vacation in a country you’ve saved up for months for or a semester-long capstone project you desperately need to finish in order to graduate.

From the start of the new fall semester in August to mid-November, Southeastern Conference football is in full swing. Kyle Field is brimming with over 100,000 spectators whooping and cheering, and Midnight Yell manifests the Aggie Spirit before game day. 

Labor Day weekend, Halloween night, Ring Dunk, Veterans Day and Thanksgiving break are all on the horizon — just before the cool breeze of winter starts nipping at your nose near the end of the semester.

But what underpins the entirety of this period of vibrant celebration, participation in tradition, new beginnings, silly class crushes and ripe self-discovery is the Red Zone.

The Red Zone is the period during which the majority of sexual assaults occur on college campuses. The Red Zone is anticipated, normalized and — at this point — deserves its own special edition calendar with each holiday marked.

In this zone, your life exists on a dial that you yourself did not set, and the ticking never really stops. When it does, it’s only a matter of time until the clock rewinds, time restarts and you’re back right at the beginning.

Because of our general shared disposition to be agreeable, choose ignorance over information and perhaps label ourselves  “apolitical,” year after year, college students may become desensitized to the Red Zone. This occurs despite the campaigns to bring awareness to the very issue — one which induces traumatizing experiences that surpass the laws of space and time. 

In fact, though we conventionally perceive time as marching forward, our reactionary culture pushes us backward in terms of taking seriously and validating the experiences of sexual assault survivors.

The Red Zone is able to carve out room for itself,  even though we are made aware of it. Whether it’s riding the bus or walking around campus, commonly-seen slogans that inadvertently place the responsibility on women to avoid sexual assault are sometimes unhelpful and — at worst — patronizing. You have to ask, “Who are these slogans for?” 

“USE THE BUDDY SYSTEM.” “PLAN YOUR RIDE HOME.” “WATCH YOUR DRINK.” These messages are written in bold, red font and tend to catch every student’s attention strolling down Military Walk and elsewhere on campus. 

Though these signs are well-intended, the resources provided are adequate and the effort to educate students is exceptional, the signs may send a double message. The reality is that these safety tips from the intervention program can be read more like a form of authoritative commentary, a threatening warning or as a mandate.

According to Associate Vice President and Title IX Coordinator Jennifer Smith, first-year female students are statistically more vulnerable to sexual assault.

If first-year female students are taught to adopt this etiquette, become very precautious and perhaps end their night out early in fear of becoming the victim of date-rape drugging, we risk sending the wrong message. Thus, the Red Zone may become the very culture we sought to end in the first place.

“What were you wearing? Why didn’t you watch your drink while celebrating at Northgate? Why did you go home with your date instead of with a friend?”

Look at how quickly these helpful suggestions can become reactionary talking points that perpetuate victim-blaming and obfuscate the issue of sexual violence, creating the expectation that first-year female students are supposed to “internalize” messaging on sexual assault before they are even situated in the college environment. Again, the suggestions slip into the territory of dictating a susceptible, targeted person’s attitude rather than demystifying sexual assault and undoing harmful stereotypes.

As a female college student myself, my immediate follow-up is, “Who is slipping drugs into my drink? And why should this unnamed perpetrator take up space in my imagination?” In addition to feeling vulnerable, my hypothetical victimization is centered by these slogans, rather than the person who commits the crime and statistically gets away with it. 

In my rebellious imagination, a change of tempo could read, “A FIRST-DEGREE FELONY OF DATE RAPE IN TEXAS CAN LAND YOU 5 YEARS TO LIFE IN PRISON.” 

This version of the sign has now gained an audience, offered a robust message and may hold the power to deter predators. In this version of the world, the perpetrator is the target and the one whose selfhood is being challenged and questioned. 

Maybe those male students who have been ignoring these signs wholesale because they don’t see their importance can begin to actually recognize the gravity and frequency of sexual assault for a change. 

Perhaps the mental burden can be lifted off of female students’ minds such that they can actually focus on becoming educated and starting careers — the reason why they came to college and even more reason why it is important to protect their ability to be here, as well as their mental faculties as dignified, female scholars.

Nevertheless, while we come together and continue to fight this uphill battle, work to empower sexual assault survivors by encouraging them to take advantage of local resources and continue to check campus institutions like our Title IX Office, we need to have more conversations rather than slogans which can often be gender-oriented. Most importantly, these conversations about sexual assault need to take place at orientation and in the classroom.

Sexual assault is not solely a matter of personal responsibility to avoid being victimized but is rather about how the community lacks in protecting the most vulnerable, younger students. 

That is why we all must continue to be responsible, educate ourselves on the pervasiveness of rape myths and learn how to prevent further atrocities that are made invisible by our culture and are difficult to address institutionally. Otherwise, our precious time and memories will continue to be dictated by those other than ourselves.

Sidney Uy is a philosophy junior and opinion writer for The Battalion.