(gentle music) - Hey folks, quick heads up.

This video deals with the topic of sexual harassment and violence.

If you or anyone you know, is dealing with this, please call the National Sexual Assault Hotline, that's confidential at 1800-656-HOPE.

All right, so let's get into it.

I'm Myles Bess, journalist and host of this fine program.

So sexual assault is a big problem in high schools across the country and students are not staying silent anymore.

And here in the Bay Area, we don't play when it comes to protesting.

High school students have been leading Me Too Movements, to raise awareness and bring about change.

So I want to know, is all this activism working?

Can Me Too actually change the culture in high schools?

(digital buzzing) Let's start in Berkeley High School, famous for the Lonely Island guys.

I'm on a Boat.

♪ I'm on a Boat ♪ ♪ I'm on a Boat ♪ You remember that?

Anyway, there's a lot of activity going on there.

I talked to me Mia Redmond about it, and she's a survivor of sexual assault.

And one of the Me Too leaders at her school before she graduated last spring.

- We decided like there needs to be some sort of change in order to make sexual harm less prevalent at Berkeley High, because we had seen it so so much.

- She helped organize a massive student walkout in February of 2020.

And together with other activists, took the mic at school board meetings to make sure that student voices and stories are heard.

Mia said the school system wasn't doing enough to stop what she calls rape culture, which is shorthand for an environment where rape and sexual harassment stand at the radar and survivors are often blamed, while perpetrators often get away with it.

And this all gets amplified by parties and school events where harassment happens so often without any consequences that it starts to feel normal.

- Like, you're at a party and you're hooking up with someone, then when someone gets too drunk and when someone does decide to make a report, everyone just kind of like, this is normal.

This happens all the time.

And this is not assault.

There's a lot of excuses I think because it's so normalized.

And I think that directly leads to rape culture.

- Now, sexual abuse doesn't just happen between students of course.

I mean, it can also involve adults like teachers or school staff, and this isn't just happening at Berkeley High.

Let's go to Los Gatos, California.

Fun fact that's where Netflix is headquartered at.

And if you know me, you know that me and Netflix are like this.

And there I met Natalie Brooks, who made a short film about the Me Too Movement last year at Los Gatos High School.

And quick plug, Natalie's film just won a big award at the All American High School Film Festival.

Check it out.

The link is in our description.

- [Natalie] From the outside, LG is idyllic, perfect teens and perfect clothes from perfect families.

Don't forget the money, but like most seemingly perfect things, you just can't see the cracks yet.

(soft music) - So she's not a survivor of abuse herself, but Natalie got mad after reading all these stories about abuse, posted anonymously to an Instagram account her friend started.

- It was that everybody was sort of participating in that culture of just sort of careless misogyny, I guess, to sort of not addressing and feeling, "Oh, it's a joke," you know, I think I was like, more people need to know about this.

What can I do to help I guess spread the word that this is happening?

- This isn't just a Bay Area thing.

This is a problem all over the country.

Here's some scary numbers.

In 2019, sexual violence in public K through 12 schools increased by about 55% from 2015 to 2018.

Now we can't be sure though, if this reflects a real increase in abuse, or if nowadays with the whole larger Me Too Movement, students feel more comfortable reporting abuse.

But when it came out, the report was all over the headlines.

I asked Mia and Natalie, what they think the main reason is for all this sexual violence?

And they both said is that their schools didn't do enough to actively call it out and prevent it.

Technically, there is a federal law called Title IX.

It guarantees students the legal right to an education without being sexually harassed or assaulted, and it's hella long and complicated.

So we thought we want you to read it.

So we're gonna give you 20 minutes.

We're going to sit here and y'all are going to read through Title IX and I'm just gonna kick back.

So enjoy that.

Put 20 minutes on the clock, please.

(gentle music) (timer beeping) I'm just playing.

I took the bullet for you and I did all that reading so you don't have to, but here's what you need to know about this topic.

First, if a student reports abuse that happens on campus or at a school sponsored event, then the school is required to take legal action, whether it's an adult or a student accused of abuse.

Number two, Title IX also requires the accused to have the right to due process.

A fair investigation to make sure it's not false reporting.

Schools are supposed to have Title IX coordinators on staff who are trained to investigate these cases, but lots don't.

And if they do, they don't always get the resources or budget they need to do their job.

And if the incident happened at a non-school event, like a party or something, Title IX doesn't require that schools get involved.

So more often than not, they don't.

And to make this even more difficult, survivors often don't want to report abuse for a bunch of reasons.

Like they're afraid of retaliation or the stigma if it gets out or they just don't know how to file a report.

And sometimes they may not want to get their abuser in trouble.

I mean, a lot of abuse happens between friends and in relationships.

And if a school doesn't know something happened, then they can't address it.

And when students do report abuse, it can get messy, because there might not be witnesses and the cases could get into a lot of, he said, she said, they said.

You throw on some teeth from social media and boom, things get murky real quick.

There have been all kinds of stories at both Berkeley and Los Gatos High of students who were accused of abuse, denying it and then their parents getting heated because their kids' reputations and futures are on the line.

When the pandemic shut their schools down, both Mia and Natalie were part of groups that started Instagram accounts.

It was supposed to be a supportive space for survivors to connect and share stories anonymously.

Natalie's film shows how the account at Los Gatos really took off.

- [Natalie] I didn't even know if the girls were gonna use it, but then I had one post and then there was two and then like two, three months in and we're at about 192.

- But as y'all know, social media can get hectic.

The Berkeley account faced a lot of backlash when people started naming alleged abusers in the comments on some post.

The accused, their parents, and their friends got all up in the DMs threatening lawsuits and calling people liars.

Instagram even shut down the Berkeley High account after they received a lot of reports.

Another downside of all this, is just the stress and trauma of it all.

- That definitely put me in a very dark place, I think especially seeing, so many other people hurt by the same things that I felt hurt by.

It definitely made me distrust a lot of adults in my life, but at the same time, I feel like I came out of that as a much stronger person, with a much more powerful voice.

- Like Mia, students across the country are stepping up to demand changes in their schools too.

I did some digging about what they want and here's my recap.

Number one, reporting.

Knowing what the heck to do when something happens, like how do you file a report?

Number two, accountability.

Can there be consequences other than pressing criminal charges?

Like maybe no prom, no graduation, or getting kicked off the football team or at least keeping abusers in separate classroom from survivors.

Number three, sex education.

I mean actually teaching what consent really, really looks like.

Like more nuanced than just no means no.

You know what I mean?

And number four, support.

Offering survivors counseling and support groups.

So back to my question from earlier, did all this student activism actually make any difference?

Well, it turns out that Berkeley High and Los Gatos High did make some pretty big changes.

Things like hiring Title IX investigators, more training for staff and teachers, funds for classes about consent and anonymous tip line.

But students say there's still more to do.

And now that students are back in person at school, Me Too activism is heating back up.

- I think we have a lot more power than we think we do.

Even if our school administrations are gonna try and tell us we don't or we're just kids, guess what?

We are gonna take back control of this and we are gonna do something about it.

- Even if you haven't experienced harassment or abuse directly, but want to help shift culture at your school, there's a lot you can do as an ally.

It can be tough on survivors of assault to take on everything.

They often need support with planning logistics for events, or just getting the word out.

- I think people could ask survivors, what can I do to help?

Like what will help you?

What can I do?

What can I say that could potentially make a change?

- Here's what you're good at.

That's what I did.

I can't write, I'm terrible at public speaking.

I get too anxious, but I can make films, right?

For some reason that works in my brain.

- But now we wanna hear from you.

What do you think are the best ways to prevent sexual violence in high school?

And again, if you or anyone you know, is dealing with this, please call the confidential National Sexual Assault Hotline at 1800-656-HOPE.