With sexual assaults occurring frequently on and around college campuses across the country, Vice President Joe Biden and other government officials addressed college administrators and representatives during a conference call Tuesday about the importance of shifting the burden of accountability off the victims and onto the perpetrators — many of whom are men.

Attention to sexual assault has a renewed importance at MSU following a reported sexual assault on an 18-year-old female student which allegedly occurred this past Saturday in Armstrong Hall.

Biden said victims too often are met with skepticism when reporting a sexual assault, and it is unfair to tell the victims what to do when the situation is, for the most part, out of their control.

“No means no,” Biden said. “No means no whether the woman is drunk or sober. Whether she is in the dorm or on the street. Whether she says yes first then says no, rape is rape is rape, assault is assault. There is no excuse for any of it.”

Biden drafted the Violence Against Women Act in 1994 and has been an anti-violence and assault awareness advocate for many years.

One MSU student organization has made it a goal to ensure more men on campus are standing up rather than standing by.

The Collaboration of Male Peer-educators Against Sexual Assault and Stereotypes, or COMPASS, is a group of male students whose goal is to educate other men on issues of male sexuality and increase male accountability in issues of sexual assault.

Comparative cultures and politics junior Jared Schulman and interdisciplinary studies in social science senior Peter Croce founded COMPASS and established it as a registered student organization this semester.

Schulman said he noticed a significant lack of male activism in regard to sexual assault and wanted to lend a distinctive male voice to the cause.

Incidents involving a stranger as the perpetrator, such as the Armstrong Hall assault, are in the minority, more than 75 percent of assaults are committed by acquaintances, Schulman said.

“As men, it’s our responsibility to prevent these assaults from happening,” he said.

MSU police Sgt. Florene McGlothian-Taylor said the department will hold educational meetings about what students should avoid and how to remain safe in a potentially threatening situation.

But a number of current educational programs and speeches are more geared toward what female students can do to keep themselves safe, she said.

Assistant director of the Women’s Resource Center Jayne Schuiteman said this is a trend she would like to see broken.

Shuiteman said educating women about the dangers of sexual assault is important, and although she admits she was among the group of people who would simply give out tips to women, in recent years she too has focused her efforts toward holding men more accountable.

But this change has to start from within, Shuiteman said, with men not only keeping themselves in check, but also monitoring each other.

“Society does a lot to make women feel guilty,” she said. “No one should be made to feel guilty about some thing like this. … Guys have to take on other guys and say, ‘Hey man, that’s not cool.’”

Shuiteman said the vast majority of men are “good guys” and only a small percentage commit sexual assault, but it is up to those good guys to step up when they see a problematic situation forming instead of acting as a bystander.