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Vice President Joe Biden To Visit Atlanta, Morehouse Tuesday

November 10th, 2015

Vice President Joe Biden is scheduled to speak Tuesday at Morehouse College as part of a White House campaign to raise awareness about sexual assaults on college campuses.

Derrick Parker, a sophomore at Morehouse, said he expects students from all the Atlanta University Center schools to hear Biden speak about sexual assault.

“Walk around this campus long enough, you’ll see ‘no means no signs,’ so it’s something we take serious here at Morehouse,” he said, “and across the street at Spelman College. And I know some of those Spelmanites will be in attendance.”

Rosalyn Billingsley and Leann Dunn are juniors at Spelman. They say sexual assault comes up a lot in conversations with friends. Billingsley said she hopes Biden’s visit leads to even more discussion.

“It should be talked about more,” she said. “I know people who feel uncomfortable talking about it ’cause they don’t want to be embarrassed or accused of being a liar. But I think it should be talked about more. It is talked about a lot already though.”

For Dunn, the vice president makes those conversations feel more important.

“I just think it’s great that he’s coming there to talk to all of us about it and not just one specific school,” she said. “And that it’s someone who as big as he is, he sees an issue with it, and he’s coming to address it to us.”

Back at Morehouse, Parker hopes for more conversation as well.

“Sexual assault is a conversation that we need to have, and I think Vice President Joe Biden he will definitely spark some of that much-needed conversation not only here at Morehouse College, but on college campuses around this country,” he said.

Biden’s visit is part of a tour on the issue that includes Clemson University in South Carolina and the U.S. Naval Academy in Annapolis, Maryland. His speech at Morehouse is scheduled for 4 p.m. Tuesday.