“Now I know,” I thought to myself, “what a vice president’s breath smells like—coffee.” An interesting fact gleaned on a surreal day. At the time, it didn’t occur to me that perhaps he should not have been close enough to me that I could smell him at all. It was Sept. 19, 2014, and I had just introduced then–Vice President Joe Biden at a White House event. I had been asked, as a survivor of college sexual assault, to join Biden at an event for It’s On Us, a new White House initiative to address the problem of sexual violence on campus. I was hoping to produce a happy ending to an incident that had rocked me to my core as an 18-year-old. My mom and dad were there. My brothers and the boyfriend I would later marry were all watching via livestream. I was in the White House, and I was getting the last word.
When I entered the East Room to deliver my speech, the crowd stood and clapped as if I were some kind of composite of all the young women and men who had similarly been hurt as college students. How bizarre to be applauded for just carrying on after a traumatic event; I hadn’t been aware there were other options.
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