Background
Clark was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, and attended Jesse O. Sanderson High School.
Clark was born in Raleigh, North Carolina, and attended Jesse O. Sanderson High School.
Clark attended the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, completing a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Political Science.
She was one of the lead complainants of the 2013 Title IX and Clery Acting charges lodged against the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Clark and Andrea Pino, then a fellow University of North Carolina student and also a sexual assault survivor, launched a nationwide campaign to use Title IX complaints to force United States. universities to address sexual assault and related problems more aggressively. She was also inducted into The Phi Beta Kappa Society for her academic work.
In 2011, she presented her work "Interpersonal Violence Policy and Prevention in United States Higher Education" at the United Nations Commission on the Status of Women.
Clark"s activism stems in part from a personal experience during Clark"s freshman year at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. In 2007, Clark was approached by a friend who confided a sexual assault.
Clark herself had been recently assaulted and the two women agreed to report their rapes to the school administration. According to Clark, when she sought support for the incident, a University of North Carolina school staff member "advised her that rape was like a football game, and that the next day was like being a Monday-morning quarterback where you look back and think, What would I have done differently?" In response, Clark began research into Title IX, a 1972 Civil Rights Acting amendment which grants certain rights to those pursuing higher education.
Together with Andrea Pino, a fellow student at University of North Carolina who also allegedly experienced Title IX violations, Clark began work on an Optical Character Recognition complaint against University of North Carolina"s administration.
In January 2013, after interviewing "hundreds of victims," Clark and Pino, in conjunction with other University of North Carolina students and alumni and one former administrator, filed a 34-page complaint against the university with the Education Department’ General’ s Office of Civil Rights. The United States. Department of Education, as a result, launched an investigation into how the university handled sexual assault cases. After the University of North Carolina case made national headlines, Clark voiced hope that the complaints filed would help bring "other stories of assault and cover-up into the light," so that change could occur nationwide.
Clark and Pino were sought out by survivors from across the country filing similar complaints at their own schools.
The two women helped form a network of students and staff at higher education institutions across the country and aided others in filing complaints against their institutions. At a May 2013 press conference announcing filings by students at Occidental College, Dartmouth College, Swarthmore College, the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Southern California, Clark issued a statement that victims of sexual violence had "reached a critical mass where we can no longer be ignored."
Clark and Pino"s activism are the subject of a controversial 2015 documentary film, The Hunting Ground.
In spring 2016, Clark and Pino published We Believe You: Survivors of Campus Sexual Assault Speak Out with Henry Holt and Company
In 2013, Clark and Pino co-founded (EROC), a group working to end sexual violence on campuses around the country. EROC helps people who have been sexually assaulted with direct resources, with pro bono therapists and attorneys, and it provides assistance with filing complaints.