 Thank you for inviting me to participate in the regional discussion on sexual assault and sexual harassment. In April, I was honored to deliver the keynote address at the U.S. Naval Academy at the discussion on these topics. I wish I was able to be there in person, but I'm grateful you're continuing this national discussion. I never expected to be speaking so publicly about my experiences as a survivor of sexual assault, but I found myself in a position with a platform where I could make a difference. As a U.S. senator and survivor, I felt that as a public figure, I could provide some hope to survivors and leadership to prevent and respond to sexual assault in our military. At my request this year, the Pentagon snapped into action and created a task force that provided concrete recommendations on how we can improve the investigation and judicial process and support to victims once a sexual assault is reported. I worked with our military and civilian leaders, the top brass, and met with commanders on bases all across Arizona on what we really needed to do better. I introduced legislation to codify these recommendations into law. The Senate then passed 17 of my 18 provisions included in this year's annual defense bill. Now we need to turn our focus to truly preventing these awful crimes from happening in the first place. I'm really grateful for the Secretary of the Navy, Richard Spencer, for his leadership, partnership, and commitment to tackling sexual assault. The military has some unique elements that aren't replicated in civilian or university settings, but the fundamentals are the same. Look, I don't have a PhD in all this, but I get a PhD in life as a survivor and a former military commander. When it comes to these crimes, we have like three concentric circles of people is the way I look at it. At the center of the circle are the perpetrators. They can be serial predators who carefully choose, seek out, groom, isolate, and then attack their prey. Or they can be someone who is drunk and refuses to take no for an answer in the moment. The violation is still the same to the victim. But we need to better identify and stop the serial predators and identify the most meaningful ways to prevent these crimes from happening among young people who are away from home for the first time and vulnerable to be victimized. The next circle outside the predators are the facilitators. These are those who help the perpetrator commit their crimes by maybe isolating the victim, getting them drunk, slipping something in their drink, or some other type of support. In my view, the facilitator should be held as accountable as the perpetrators. The final group are the bystanders. That's the rest of us. People who see someone in a risky situation, but they walk by the problem. People who are out with their friends but decide it's okay to leave one behind because she seems to be having fun with that guy she just met at the bar. People who have a friend who boasts about getting girls drunk and having sex when they can't consent. And then you laugh at them about their score. People who would never want their sister or their mother or their future daughter or their son to be raped. But they feel it's not their problem to raise their awareness, to be vigilant and to do their part on a Saturday night at a party to make sure this crime doesn't happen on their campus. I actually believe the most meaningful shift in preventing sexual assault is with us, the bystanders. Exactly what education and training modality has the most impact for this generation of teenagers heading off to college, but universities have the resources and the smarts to study that. Don't just bore your new students with mandatory training that doesn't convict them to be a warrior against the scourge of assaults on campuses. Figure out what speaks to their hearts, what stirs their consciousness, what rallies them to get off the sidelines and to take action. As a fighter pilot in the Air Force, we would often have mishaps where life was lost or planes were severely damaged. We'd always do detailed investigations and what we learned over time is there's never one thing that led to the tragedy. There was always a chain of events. We called it the safety chain of events that led to the awful outcome. We also realized that breaking any links in the chain along the way in most cases would have prevented the crash and the loss of life. We all commit in our training to be vigilant and to do our part to interrupt that safety chain of events. Every pilot has the authority on any mission, no matter the level experience or rank, to get on the radio and announce what we call a knock it off. We are all then trained to stop maneuvering, pull up to a safe altitude, stop talking on the radio, regroup and figure out what the possible danger was that was looming. I think the same concept applies to stopping sexual assaults on campuses. There's usually a chain of events. There are often indications of risks that others can see. There are opportunities for a knock it off call by a friend or a bystander. We may never know that we prevented a crime, but it sure beats the alternative of doing nothing. So there's a little food for thought for your conference. What all of you in the room are doing today is incredibly important and I am so grateful for your commitment to stopping sexual assaults. I really look forward to continuing to work alongside all of you to combat sexual assault wherever it happens. If there's ever anything I can do, please don't hesitate to contact me at my Washington D.C. office. All the best.