Today almost 63% of sexual assault cases involving women are not reported to authorities. To encourage women to stand up against sexual assault, Tarana Burke initiated the Me Too movement in 2006. The idea sparked when she was working with a couple of high school girls who were revealing their past experiences with sexual assault and when  Burke couldn’t find  the resources to help them she took matters into her own hand and created the hashtag “me too.” This phrase was meant to show solidarity within women and to show those victims of sexual violence that they are not alone in the fight.

“It shows how strong women actually are, with such destructive experiences they push and thrive with the help of one another. The fact that these role model celebrities are coming out with no fear for losing their glamour and fame just to show these female victims that they aren’t in this fight alone, that they are equals, and that they are willing to use their popularity to make everyone’s voice heard,” senior Justin Ferrer said.

The movement became known to the public eye when actress Alyssa Milano posted a tweet encouraging women to use the phrase “me too” to show how big of a problem sexual assault is within the world. A day afterwards, 4.7 million people on Facebook spoke out and made almost 12 million posts. Since then, many actresses in Hollywood have spoken up about their past encounters with director Harvey Weinstein and other people that serve a major role in the entertainment industry.

Although the movement has created a  large platform for women all around the world to speak up, it has recently received some backlash from actor Matt Damon “There’s a difference between, you know, patting someone on the butt and rape or child molestation, right? Both of those behaviors need to be confronted and eradicated without question, but they shouldn’t be conflated, right?” Matt Damon said. This comment caused a outbreak in the media and outraged Minnie Driver, Damon’s past co-worker, and Milano.

Damon argued that today in society many are too focused on the bad things actors do and forget the ones who have done nothing wrong, whereas Milano argued that there is no spectrum to sexual assault and that there is no such thing as a difference.

“I completely support women voicing this. If they [celebrities] can speak up then others will too. It can be traumatizing for someone to be sexualy assulted so I see speaking up or tweeting about it as something brave,” sophomore Madelyn Palacios said.

Nonetheless, Burke’s future plans for this movement are to find  other means of spreading awaremess about sexual assault. She hopes to spread the message to people of different ages, sexualities, and cultural backgrounds in order shed light on such a sensitive topic.