- I loved my school.
Then I was raped, and that kinda changed everything.
I went to a small liberal arts college that is a D1 school.
My freshman year in my first class,
there were six football players and a soccer player.
And they were my best friends.
The world was perfect, you know.
There was nothing that could hurt me.
- There’s really nothing bigger than sports in this country.
In 1998, as a young woman,
I was gang raped by four college football players.
The horror for me is I just feel like,
how has nothing changed in almost 20 years?
The NCAA could have huge impacts on our culture for change,
and you see them hesitant.
That’s not okay.
- My junior year ended.
I was definitely hanging out with athletes socially.
I felt safe with them.
We’d gotten back to the house.
I went to sleep in my best friend at the time’s room.
We started hooking up,
which started off as
consensually as two drunk people can consent.
And then at a certain point, I told him “Stop. I’m tired.”
I kinda just like moved away from him,
went to the other side of the bed.
And he said “No,” and got on top of me.
I dissociated and froze.
I’m watching it happen to myself.
I’m not actually the person it’s happening to.
Eventually I start crying, and it’s still going on.
And I don’t know what makes the shift happen,
but suddenly, like, I’m me again.
And I am just like,
“Stop, stop. Like, stop it.”
You know. And I grab him and I push him,
and he starts yelling at me.
He starts throwing my clothes in my face.
And he’s like, “Get the f--k out of this house!”
I leave… could not tell you how I got home. 42 00:02:17,738 --> 00:00:00,000 I didn’t completely
understand the severity of what had happened to me.
I didn’t think it was going to impact me the way it eventually did.
Just over three years ago,
I came forward with my personal story,
and since that time I’ve become an activist.
“Hi, my name is Brenda Tracy.
I am a rape survivor,
and I am also the founder of the Set the Expectation campaign.”
I started sharing my story on different campuses,
and Colgate heard about me and brought me
onto their campus to talk about issues of sexual violence.
As I was traveling the country and working with different football
coaches and their teams, I was recognizing
that there were some coaches that were standing in front of their players
and setting the expectation that certain behaviors were not okay.
And then other coaches weren’t having these conversations.
All of our young people know
exactly what kind of grades they need to get,
what classes they need to go to,
to be eligible to play sports.
What if we did that with behavior?
What if this young student knew:
if I commit an act of sexual assault, or rape,
I’m not eligible to play sports?
Now we have to talk about consent.
Now we have to talk about healthy relationships.
Now we have to talk about behavior.
It breaks my heart to think that there are
people who have been assaulted,
who never said anything
because they didn’t think they were going to be believed
for whatever reason that is, and it kills me.
My community was horrible to me.
They called me a liar;
I received death threats.
All this stuff happened to me to make me go away,
and it worked.
One of the things that drives the bad decisions
we see in athletics is absolutely money.
Athletics is what brings money into our colleges.
But when you have these contracts and money and alumni,
it’s kind of a recipe for disaster to make bad decisions.
And we’re placing money over human life.
You know, after coming forward with my story in 2014,
an investigation was done.
And we found out that at the time Oregon State University
was trying to renovate Parker Stadium and they needed
tens of millions of dollars to do this.
They were courting the Reser family for money,
and they couldn’t have a rape scandal on their hands.
The worth of my life to those people
at that time was the cost of Reser Stadium.
You know, as I travel the country,
I look at all these football stadiums,
and I wonder who had to suffer for that building.
Before I was raped,
I’d already made the decision I was going to law school.
Growing up I always wanted to be in a profession
that could help people.
I volunteer full time with Safe Harbor,
which is a local advocacy organization for survivors
of domestic and sexual violence.
One day, my best friends and I want to start a nonprofit.
Having a girl gang of women who are
so committed to empowering other women
and helping other women and educating other women.
And I will fight for people as
hard as I’ve fought for myself,
and as hard as I wish someone would fight for me.
Because there are some of you who probably 113 00:06:05,031 --> 00:00:00,000 know a survivor, could be a family member or…
The majority of sexual violence is committed by men.
But it’s not all of our male population
doing these things. It’s ten percent.
So 90 percent of our guys are good guys,
and that's who I focus on, is the 90 percent
who I think can step up and align themselves
with women in this work, and be the solution.
Let people know you’re the 90 percent.
It’s the quickest, easiest way to let people
know where you stand.
The responses I get from young men are incredible.
It’s amazing.
And for me, it feels like this is
why I do the work.
It seems like a pretty simple concept:
Attach eligibility to behavior.
We need the NCAA to step up.
Playing sports is a privilege and not a right.
Where respect lives, violence can’t exist.