Beyond the Letter of the Law: How Schools and Communities Can Truly Shift the Culture Around Consent and Survivor Support
This is from a LIVE YouTube Discussion on Tuesday, September 29th [Want to watch the full YouTube video, scroll to the bottom of this article and you will find the full video or click here]:
In the wake of the Cornell University fraternity lawsuit, conversations about consent, boundaries, and bystander intervention have reignited across the country. Last night (Tues, September 29th), author, subject matter expert, and speaker Mike Domitrz led a conversation on YouTube Live exploring several aspects of this case and how society is reacting.
“Are we just training students on ‘what not to do,’ or are we equipping them with the mindset and real-world skills to make a difference?”
Mike Domitrz in the Live Feed.
Drawing on decades of experience working in schools and the military, Mike unpacks the hard truths about current education, why the law is only the start, and how to cultivate cultures of respect and action.
Why the Law is Not Enough
The recent case involving a Cornell University fraternity and a survivor known as Jane Doe has exposed painful gaps not only in campus culture but in the very laws meant to protect students and survivors.
New York state’s problematic legislation fails to adequately address consent for those incapacitated due to willingly consumed alcohol or drugs. This means that even when someone cannot meaningfully consent, there may still be no legal redress if the substances weren’t forced upon them.
As Mike explained, “if somebody goes out and gets drunk, they choose to drink, right? They get to a place potentially of being incapacitated. In New York, it could imply that somebody could do something to them sexually and it would be consensual because the person chose to drink. As long as they don’t resist the consent or they do say, I wanna do this.” [
This legal “exception” is not just confusing, it is a recipe for harm and a deep betrayal of our responsibility to protect the vulnerable. While efforts are underway to reform such outdated laws, Mike emphasized, “you can’t go back in time and apply new laws to old cases. So it’s not going to help in this case, but at least it could for future survivors” [
Law vs. Healthy Behavior: Teaching the Difference
Many students and even adults assume legal standards are moral or healthy ones. But as Mike observed, “the law is the lowest standard. It’s not necessarily a healthy one” .
Most state laws barely manage to define consent, often reducing it to simple “permission.” That is not good enough. “You can get people’s permission to do things they don’t want to do. It’s not necessarily mutual,” Mike pointed out .
Instead, education must go beyond legality and teach what truly healthy consent looks like [see article on consent education in middle schools]:
- Mutual desire: Not talking someone into it or pressuring them, “you’re only doing this if you both want to do it”
- Specificity: Consent for one act (like a kiss) does not extend to others.
- In the moment: Consent is always now, not a blanket approval for the future.
- Freedom to be removed: Not “reversible,” but “free to be removed” instantaneously .
- Sound mind and legal age: Recognizing not only incapacitation but the broader reality that many (and sometimes the majority) of legal minors in high school cannot legally consent at all.
- Freely given, not forced: No coercion, emotional duress, or pressure.
Healthy conversations require unpacking these nuances. Students (and adults) need to be able to recognize the difference between what’s merely legal and what’s right, what reflects honoring dignity and mutual respect.
Why “Don’t Do This, Don’t Do That” Isn’t Enough
Most sexual assault and consent education is built around lists of forbidden behaviors. This doesn’t work.
“When I go into school, students tell me, we’re never told what to do, we’re told what not to do. That’s problematic because if you’re only being told what not to do, when things happen, you don’t know what to do or how to” .
True impact comes from teaching students how to treat others as human beings in real-life situations. Mike emphasizes that the world, including much of mainstream media and pornography, encourages a lack of empathy: treating others “as a sex toy,” normalizing substance-fueled sexual encounters, and stripping away the sense of mutual responsibility .
Educators must move beyond the workbook scenario and policy lecture to sparking real reflection: “Good education… is not just ‘is this assault, yes or no?’ with no humanity. There’s no story engaging me. There’s no emotion.” . Instead, ask bold questions, challenge motives, and connect the topic to who students truly want to be.
Bystander Intervention: “Because It’s Who I Am”
One of the most heartbreaking aspects of the Cornell case is the presence of a group chat with over 50 people who witnessed a horrific message, apart from one, failed to act. Mike relays that, when students are asked why they wouldn’t intervene, the answers are “fear of confrontation and ‘none of my business’” . If young people are socialized to believe harm to others is “none of my business,” we’ve failed them.
So, how do you change this? By going beyond manuals and policies to character and identity:
“Who you are is not someone who can stand by while somebody else is harmed,” Mike teaches . When asked, students nearly always agree. Give them a script: “Somebody says, ‘why are you getting involved?’ … Ready? Because it’s who I am” . The shift is profound, and essential.
Skill-building must follow: How do you call for help? How do you step in safely? Teach both the why and the how, so students are motivated and equipped to act.
Building Cultures of Respect: Moving from Policy to Practice
Many school and university programs are legally motivated, checking the “Title IX” box with online modules or Welcome Week PowerPoints. According to Mike, these approaches “are highly ineffective at changing, actually connecting to the soul” .
Instead, institutions that see real change invest in repeated, live, skill-based programs, often starting with first-year students in their very first hours on campus.
Mike offers an example that he personally sees when some universities bring him to speak during Welcome Week:
“Within hours of being dropped off (on campus), they gotta sit with me for an hour … a deep dive, soul-driven, skill-based” discussion . These campuses send a clear message: you belong to a community founded on mutual respect, and you are trusted and expected to live up to it, starting now.
Greek life, in particular, needs to “call out Greek life,” and stop protecting bad actors. “If we’re going to say there’s all these Greek life people doing amazing work, then we need to see Greek life running to the front of the news right now going, this is not acceptable. This is not how we roll.”
Survivor Support and the Trap of Villainization
Cases like these aren’t just legal dramas: they affect real people and reverberate through entire communities. Survivors and their loved ones may be retraumatized by news cycles, social posts, or even the way “support” is framed. Mike often reminds students and adults: “every survivor has strength and courage within them. Why? Because they survived. Whether they come forward or not…” .
We can unintentionally silence survivors by making it seem that only “monsters” commit sexual harm: “If you say that any contact at all is a monster, no one reports anything because they don’t believe their partner’s a monster. You actually hurt survivors from coming forward” .
Instead of drawing sharp lines that separate “bad people” from “the rest of us,” we must help everyone see how common unhealthy behaviors are, and how ordinary people can cross those boundaries, sometimes without thinking. This mindset makes space for honest conversations and for people to choose differently.
The Power of Real Education
The good news? Changing the approach to education does work. Mike cites compelling survey results:
“97% of high school students, when they exit the assembly, say they’re more likely to ask first for consent. 96% are more likely to intervene for somebody at a party… over 50,000 high school students have said that on their surveys in the last few years” .
Education is the foundation of culture. When parents and educators demand, and deliver, effective, soul-driven programming, norms shift.
“If you’re at the end here wondering, I mean, how much does education stop it?… Education matters. That’s why we need to do more of it” .
Final Takeaway: We All Have a Role
The biggest lesson of the Cornell case, and so many others like it, is that culture change cannot be delegated to a legal definition or ineffective education approaches. Everyone, students, educators, parents, and administrators, has a concrete role.
We must stop treating consent, intervention, and survivor support as abstract rules and start weaving them into daily action and identity. As Mike puts it, “all of us have a role … to make sure that our partner’s consenting and … to intervene for others … to support survivors.”
The future we want starts with the conversations and choices we make now.
About Mike Domitrz
Mike Domitrz is a Hall-of-Fame Speaker, author, subject matter expert, and founder of The Center for Respect who helps organizations, schools, and the military build cultures rooted in consent, respect, honoring boundaries, bystander intervention, sexual assault prevention, and healthy relationships. For over 30 years, he has equipped audiences of all ages with practical, real-world tools. Known as one of the first pioneers on teaching consent in the early 1990s, his “Ask First & Respect the Answer” philosophy to consent has spread throughout the world. Mike transforms how people engage with each other, stand up for each other, and raise their own standards.
Why does Mike have such a deep passion? For Mike, this work is personal. In 1989, he received a phone call that the youngest of his sisters had been sexually assaulted. That moment would change their lives and a year later Mike discovered a way he could try to make a positive impact – by speaking in schools.