A businessman has developed a series of apps to enable students to record themselves giving statements of consent before they have sex.
Michael Lissack created the "We Consent" brand, which consists of three different apps, all designed to ensure young people having sex had given their consent first.
One of the programmes video records a conversation about the sexual activity, while the other two record individuals watching a message which states "no", so there is proof the individual has received the decline of consent.
The videos are encrypted and so cannot be hacked, says Lissack, who is executive director of the Institute for the Study of Coherence and Emergence, an educational research institution, and are stored in an offline database. The only occasion they can be viewed is when there is a legal reason to disclose them.
"The main purpose is to change the conversation," Lissack told The Chronicle of Higher Education. If these apps work the way they should, in a year or two if people go to a frat party, instead of the base assumption being everyone in attendance is available for hooking up, the base assumption will be, if you wish to hook up, talk about it first."
Lissack is marketing the app to colleges, and says athletic teams and fraternities are the individuals mostly involved in sex scandals. He is also confident the app can show whether the users are drunk.
"We’re making a video. If you’re noticeably intoxicated, presumably it will show on the video," he added.
Speaking to HuffPost UK, Lissack said: "Affirmative Consent is becoming a critical part of the college and university experience. New York and California have recently codified this standard into law. At the Federal level, the Department of Education is increasingly asking schools to do the same.
"But, such a shift in societal norms is not easy. Merely articulating a new 'standard' is insufficient to make that standard an automatic mindset. Conversation and tools are needed. ISCE.edu is proud to be the first to offer a set of meaningful tools to help students practice the "Only Yes Means Yes" standard. Our apps can make a major difference is helping to change the attitude on college campuses regarding sexual assaults and casual sexual interactions."