The so-called red zone is the period when college students’ risk of being sexually assaulted is highest. According to a 2019 campus climate survey – one of the most recent studies of its size – first-year women are at the highest risk.
In a survey of nine U.S. colleges, over half of campus sexual assaults of first-year students occurred between orientation and Halloween. Data collected by the University of Colorado at Boulder’s Office of Institutional Equity and Compliance in 2021 and 2024 show that the majority of assaults of first-year women students took place in September or October.
