Michaela Perez wants her school to talk about consent before students leave for college.

Perez, a senior at Miami Palmetto Senior High School in Palmetto Bay, is among students amplifying the "Educate Your Sons" movement, an online campaign that aims to shift the responsibility of preventing sexual assault from victims to perpetrators. She told The Panther, the school's student newspaper, that mandatory consent education is missing from classrooms.

"I think it should be required for everyone to have some sort of course on knowing things about sexual acts, a lot of times boys get raised without having these talks without their parents," Perez told The Panther. "What happens with that is they get raised with this lack of knowledge about consent." The movement spread after a former Cornell student, identified in court documents as Jane Doe, filed a civil lawsuit in September alleging she was drugged and sexually assaulted by seven former members of Cornell's Chi Phi fraternity in October 2024, according to BBC News. On Oct. 1, Gov. Kathy Hochul signed an executive order appointing the New York attorney general's office as special prosecutor to investigate the alleged assault, according to the office.

Thousands of women posted on social media using the hashtag #educateyoursons in the case's wake, The Panther reported.

Why students say reporting falls short

Perez pointed to reporting barriers.

"The issue is that most cases that girls report get ignored or pushed down, it gets treated almost like nothing ever happened," Perez said. "What happens as a result of that is that most girls don't feel the risk and trouble is worth it, so instead of reporting it they just stay quiet." A 2016 Justice Department analysis found nearly 80 percent of rapes and sexual assaults went unreported, according to a 2018 Brennan Center for Justice report. The finding is based on 2016 data and should not be presented as a current estimate.

A broader push for education

Mike Domitrz, founder of the Center for Respect, has conducted consent trainings at schools, universities and military installations since founding the organization in 2003. He began his advocacy work after learning his sister had been raped in 1989, according to the Center for Respect's website.

Domitrz challenged the idea that asking for consent is awkward.

"People make it sound like they have this smooth magical movement that happens every time someone kisses in high school, which just is not reality at all," Domitrz told The Panther.

Whether Miami-Dade County Public Schools offers consent-focused curriculum remains unclear. No district policy or administration response on the topic appeared in available public records. Perez's call for a required course represents a student advocacy position, not a pending district proposal.