Lady Gaga stunned listeners everywhere on Sept. 18, 2015 with the release of her latest music video for her song, “Till it happens to you.”

Most of Lady Gaga’s fans are accustomed to her dressing up in a meat dress and singing about the paparazzi. No one could have imagined what came next.  

“Till it Happens to You” was released last February for the film, “The Hunting Ground”, a documentary about sexual violence on campuses. The music video for this powerful ballad compiles clips of the documentary, showing several snippets of women getting raped and the traumatic aftermath.

The lyrics have a key role in showing the effects of sexual assault, as there are echoes of  “it gets better…you’ll be fine” in the background of the song while Gaga responds angrily with “how the hell could you know?”

The song stems from a personal connection to this issue as Gaga revealed last year in an interview with “The Howard Stern Show” that she was raped by a record producer when she was only nineteen.

At the end of the video the screen fades to black and these words pop up on the screen: “One in five women will be sexually assaulted this year unless something changes.” It then directs those who need it to call 1-800-656-HOPE, the sexual assault hotline.  

As  I sat and read those words, the numbers didn’t quite hit me. One in five is just a ratio. The facts and statistics people see don’t make people think about the magnitude of the issue. This is why Gaga didn’t just have numbers in the video, she showed disturbing images of the reality of sexual assault. Then when the statistic showed at the end, I realized how many people are affected by this horrible reality.

According to the statistic, as you and your four friends go off to college, one will be sexually assaulted. When you think about it that way, it personalizes the problem.

After some of my friends watched the video, they expressed concern about going to college and I can’t help feeling worried too. Girls shouldn’t have to wait in fear until it happens to them because more action needs to be taken to prevent sexual assault on campuses in the first place.

This music video shed light on the fact that when rape occurs on campus, the victims will suffer all the consequences and the perpetrators have little to no repercussions. The clips show women hiding in their dorms, depressed, missing class, all because of one person’s abuse.

Many universities, like Johns Hopkins University, try to prevent sexual assault by providing a mandatory “consent seminar.” However, just last year at Hopkins, there was an incident of rape at a fraternity party and there was no punishment.

Large universities use their mandatory seminars as excuses when they get sued to try and show that they made their best effort to prevent it.

However, these things don’t just happen. Gaga proved through this influential video that stricter rules need to be enforced to prevent a woman’s education from getting jeopardized.