1990s National Spotlight

“There’s Only One Way to Know”

Antioch College students develop the language of consent

At Antioch College in 1991, students called an impromptu meeting that swelled to standing room only. A male student had been accused of raping two women but had been allowed to remain enrolled. Attendees wrote up a list of demands for administrators on the spot, then spent months crafting a sexual assault policy and persuading the college to adopt it.As they worked to clearly define assault, the students had a revelation: the common factor in every sexual transgression, from the smallest unwanted touch to the most violent attack, was lack of consent. It seemed self-evident that if an aggressor had sex with someone who was silent or incapacitated, consent had not been given. Their groundbreaking policy stipulated that everyone in the Antioch community had to sign an agreement that verbal permission would be sought to initiate any sexual encounter. Permission had to be granted continually and repeatedly as the intimate encounter progressed. The notion prompted uneasiness elsewhere—then outrage, then ridicule, becoming fodder for pundits, stand-up comedians, and even merciless satire on Saturday Night Live. One network talking head called the policy the result of “political correctness and campus feminism run amok.” The shaming took a toll. One of the key leaders dropped out. Another reflected years later on how humiliating the criticism had been. But the Antioch students’ crucial insight—that not resisting isn’t the same as giving permission for a sexual encounter—gradually took hold. While it may have seemed to critics that requiring verbal consent just added cringey awkwardness to sex, the change was more nuanced: what it really did was shift the responsibility for uncomfortable conversations from the default passive party, usually a woman, to everyone participating. The Antioch students’ innovation became fundamental to understanding what constitutes assault. Nowadays, expecting clear communication during sexual intimacy is commonplace, and its absence is widely accepted as a red flag.

"Is It Date Rape?" (Saturday Night Live, 1993)

On Antioch and consent (New York Times, 2018)

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