I’m staring down the barrel of a gun and I’m too afraid to dodge the impending bullet.

One in five women are sexually assaulted in college. Who’s to say I won’t be one of them?

Ninety-five percent of all college sexual assault cases go unreported. Who’s to say I’d have the strength to tell anyone, much less prosecute?

College women are four times more likely to be sexually assaulted than college men. Who’s to say my gender won’t predetermine my well-being?

I understand the college decision process isn’t supposed to be butterflies and rainbows. But it isn’t supposed to make me fear for my safety, either.

It’s not supposed to be this way, you know. Colleges are supposed to protect us against sexual assault or, at the very least, help with the healing process after it happens. They’re required by Title IX, a law prohibiting gender discrimination, to take all necessary preventative and investigative measures. But lately, institutions have been more protective of their image than their students.

At Florida State, a star football player accused of rape was not asked by the school to discuss the issue for an entire year, was found not guilty by a court of law and by FSU with their student conduct code, and continued playing football, even after a DNA match was found with the rape kit administered after the event in question. This kit took 11 months to test.

At Columbia University, a student made headlines when, for her senior visual arts thesis, she carried a mattress with her during her entire senior year to illustrate the weight she carries after being raped and having the school mishandle her case. The school refused to even suspend the rapist, and she, along with 22 other students, filed a Title IX complaint about the mishandling of their sexual assault cases.

There are now 173 cases of alleged mishandling or rape and sexual assault complaints at 144 colleges in the U.S., an increase of more than 300% in three years.

Colleges aren’t protecting their students because they don’t want the bad publicity that stems from the investigation process. I don’t know why they’re not taking preventative measures – maybe because to do so would mean acknowledging that there’s a problem in the first place. But they’re creating unsafe environments for their students, and as a female in particular, I have to factor this into my college decision process. And I don’t know what to do. Is it better when a college doesn’t have a history of sexual assault cases, or does that mean they’re sweeping cases under the rug? Should I dive in and research every college I’m even remotely interested in, or will the answers I find just make me more anxious and unsure? And what can I do to stop it?

I mean, I could try increasing awareness. That’s why I’m writing this, I guess. Once I’m in college, I can make smart decisions and encourage my friends to do so as well. But that’s not going to stop sexual assaulters from preying on the vulnerable. I could try to confront them in some way, but that may involve putting myself in danger. And if I try to confront the system, the school itself, they could easily discipline me for speaking out. Really, I just feel stuck.

But here’s the thing: I shouldn’t have to feel stuck. It shouldn’t be my responsibility to create an environment where I’m not constantly looking over my shoulder, fearing for my safety; that’s the job of the colleges marketing their schools toward me and my peers. Universities need to be completely transparent in reporting their sexual assault cases and making their schools safer for students. Instead of burying the problem under bureaucratic mismanagement so that their colleges doesn’t get a reputation for sexual assault, administrators need to step up and start setting an example for other institutions to follow. Only then will students feel safe and cared for on college campuses. Only then can higher education truly be the hub of critical thinking and human experience that it was intended to be.