Andrea Pino
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Andrea Lynn Pino is an American
women's rights Women's rights are the rights and entitlements claimed for women and girls worldwide. They formed the basis for the women's rights movement in the 19th century and the feminist movements during the 20th and 21st centuries. In some countries, ...
and civil rights activist, author, and a public scholar on issues of global gender based violence, media framing of violence, gender and sexuality, and narratives of survivorhood. She is the
queer ''Queer'' is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or cisgender. Originally meaning or , ''queer'' came to be used pejoratively against those with same-sex desires or relationships in the late 19th century. Beginning in the lat ...
daughter of Cuban refugees and has stated that she is a survivor of
sexual assault Sexual assault is an act in which one intentionally sexually touches another person without that person's consent, or coerces or physically forces a person to engage in a sexual act against their will. It is a form of sexual violence, which ...
. As a student, Pino was one of the primary writers and one of five complainants in the 2013
Title IX Title IX is the most commonly used name for the federal civil rights law in the United States that was enacted as part (Title IX) of the Education Amendments of 1972. It prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other educat ...
and
Clery Act The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act or Clery Act, signed in 1990, is a federal statute codified at , with implementing regulations in the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations at . The Clery Act requir ...
complaints against the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States ...
. Along with Annie E. Clark, Sophie Karasek,
Kamilah Willingham Kamilah Willingham is an African American activist, feminist, speaker, and writer. The focus of her activism centers on sexual assaults on college campuses as well as gender equality and civil rights. She is best known for her appearance in the do ...
, Wagatwe Wanjuki, and Caroline Heldman, she became a national leader in filing this sort of complaint, advising sexual assault victims at universities across the United States. Pino is a primary subject in the 2015 documentary film '' The Hunting Ground'', directed by Kirby Dick and produced by
Amy Ziering Amy Ziering (born 1962 in Massachusetts) is an American film producer and director. Mostly known for her work in documentary films, she is a regular collaborator of director Kirby Dick; they co-directed 2002's ''Derrida'' and 2020's '' On the Re ...
and is also the author of “We Believe You: Survivors of Campus Sexual Assault Speak Out". Pino has since been dogged by claims from fellow activists in the field and journalists that there is little truth behind the stories she told to gain her national reputation, some going as far as to call it an elaborate “web of lies.”


Early life

Pino was raised in
Miami Miami ( ), officially the City of Miami, known as "the 305", "The Magic City", and "Gateway to the Americas", is a East Coast of the United States, coastal metropolis and the County seat, county seat of Miami-Dade County, Florida, Miami-Dade C ...
,
Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...
, United States, in a family of
Cuba Cuba ( , ), officially the Republic of Cuba ( es, República de Cuba, links=no ), is an island country comprising the island of Cuba, as well as Isla de la Juventud and several minor archipelagos. Cuba is located where the northern Caribbea ...
n descent. She attended
International Studies Charter High School International Studies Charter High School (ISCHS) is a high school formed by the Spanish, Italian, and French Embassies in association with Miami-Dade County Public Schools. It is located on historic ''Calle Ocho.'' It is operated by education ma ...
.


Education

Pino attended the
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill A university () is an institution of higher (or tertiary) education and research which awards academic degrees in several academic disciplines. Universities typically offer both undergraduate and postgraduate programs. In the United States ...
; she was the first in her family to go to college. She has a Bachelor of Arts in Political Science. She has stated that she was raped twice while in college. The first incident occurred several weeks into her freshman year, when she was in a
fraternity A fraternity (from Latin language, Latin ''wiktionary:frater, frater'': "brother (Christian), brother"; whence, "wiktionary:brotherhood, brotherhood") or fraternal organization is an organization, society, club (organization), club or fraternal ...
member's room and he gave her a drugged drink. According to her, she fell unconscious, and only woke up the next morning, in her own dorm room, with scratches and bruises, with a note attached to her that said "We found you by the road". She did not report the incident. Her second rape occurred, she says, in March 2012, during her sophomore year, when an unknown male student whom she had just met brought her into a bathroom and forcibly raped her; she emerged, bloodied, and ran back to her room, dripping blood the whole way; she went to sleep, and woke up in a pool of her own blood. The veracity of Pino's accounts of her rapes has been questioned by journalist
Cathy Young Catherine Alicia Young (born Yekaterina Jung russian: Екатерина Юнг; born February 10, 1963) is a Russian-born American journalist. Young is primarily known for her writing about feminism and other cultural issues, as well as about R ...
, as well as by
KC Johnson Robert David Johnson (born 27 November 1967), also known as KC Johnson, is an American history professor at Brooklyn College and the City University of New York Graduate Center. He played a major role in reporting on the Duke University lacrosse ...
and Stuart Taylor in their 2017 book ''The Campus Rape Frenzy''. Young also wrote that, after the first time she questioned Pino's story in print, she was contacted by another female anti-rape activist, who did not want to be named, who told Young that she and some other activists were "frustrated" by what she called Pino's "web of lies".


Activism


Title IX and sexual assault activism

According to Pino, her activism was driven by her experiences with sexual assault and harassment at the University of North Carolina. After telling administrators that she was raped, Pino claimed that she had been unsupported by the university administration and policies that purported to protect her and other students reporting sexual violence. She alleged that an administrator told her that her problem was that she was "just lazy." According to Pino, when she began to communicate to the UNC administration her desire to receive support for her assault and for the assaults of students who approached her for help, UNC administration denied that their policies were in non-compliance. In response, Pino approached UNC alumna Annie E. Clark, who also had reported being mistreated. The two began to research
Title IX Title IX is the most commonly used name for the federal civil rights law in the United States that was enacted as part (Title IX) of the Education Amendments of 1972. It prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other educat ...
, a federal legislation which grants students the right to an education without sex discrimination, as well as the
Clery Act The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act or Clery Act, signed in 1990, is a federal statute codified at , with implementing regulations in the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations at . The Clery Act requir ...
, which grants protections for sexual assault victims on college campuses. Their research yielded a strategy originally proposed by feminist scholar Catharine MacKinnon in the 1970s. She argued for using the threat of withdrawing federal funding as a means to force universities to effect changes in sexual assault policies. In January 2013, Pino and Clark, together with several other UNC students and one former administrator, filed a 34-page complaint against the university with the
United States Department of Education The United States Department of Education is a Cabinet-level department of the United States government. It began operating on May 4, 1980, having been created after the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare was split into the Department ...
's OCR. After the women filed the complaint, the OCR and the Clery Compliance Division both launched investigations into how the university was handling sexual assault and crime on campus. Following the media coverage of the UNC complaint, Pino and Clark connected with sexual assault survivors from institutions across the country and began assisting them in filing
Title IX Title IX is the most commonly used name for the federal civil rights law in the United States that was enacted as part (Title IX) of the Education Amendments of 1972. It prohibits sex-based discrimination in any school or any other educat ...
and
Clery Act The Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act or Clery Act, signed in 1990, is a federal statute codified at , with implementing regulations in the U.S. Code of Federal Regulations at . The Clery Act requir ...
complaints against their institutions. As a result, students have successfully filed complaints against
Swarthmore College Swarthmore College ( , ) is a Private college, private Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania. Founded in 1864, with its first classes held in 1869, Swarthmore is one of the earliest coeduca ...
,
Occidental College Occidental College (informally Oxy) is a private liberal arts college in Los Angeles, California. Founded in 1887 as a coeducational college by clergy and members of the Presbyterian Church, it became non-sectarian in 1910. It is one of the oldes ...
, the
University of California, Berkeley The University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley, Berkeley, Cal, or California) is a public land-grant research university in Berkeley, California. Established in 1868 as the University of California, it is the state's first land-grant u ...
,
Dartmouth College Dartmouth College (; ) is a private research university in Hanover, New Hampshire. Established in 1769 by Eleazar Wheelock, it is one of the nine colonial colleges chartered before the American Revolution. Although founded to educate Native A ...
, The University of Southern California, and
Columbia University Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
, among others. Clark and Pino's activism are the subject of a 2015
documentary film A documentary film or documentary is a non-fictional film, motion-picture intended to "document reality, primarily for the purposes of instruction, education or maintaining a Recorded history, historical record". Bill Nichols (film critic), Bil ...
, The Hunting Ground which featured a song by
Lady Gaga Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta ( ; born March 28, 1986), known professionally as Lady Gaga, is an American singer, songwriter, and actress. She is known for her image reinventions and musical versatility. Gaga began performing as a teenag ...
titled “
Til it Happens to You "Til It Happens to You" is a song produced and performed by American singer Lady Gaga. She co-wrote the song with Diane Warren for the 2015 documentary film ''The Hunting Ground'', which deals with campus rape in the United States. The song had ...
”. Gaga’s song was nominated for
Best Original Song This is a list of categories of awards commonly awarded through organizations that bestow film awards, including those presented by various film, festivals, and people's awards. Best Actor/Best Actress *See Best Actor#Film awards, Best Actress#F ...
at the 88th Academy Awards and performed it after an introduction by Joe Biden, then
Vice President of the United States The vice president of the United States (VPOTUS) is the second-highest officer in the executive branch of the U.S. federal government, after the president of the United States, and ranks first in the presidential line of succession. The vice ...
. During the live performance Pino and 51 other survivors appeared on stage. Pino’s work has been featured in multiple books and profiled in The New York Times, Vogue, and Cosmopolitan Magazine. She has also appeared on PBS Newshour, RealTime with Bill Maher, AlJazeera, and Melissa Harris-Perry on MSNBC and Pino has spoken for herself in
blog A blog (a truncation of "weblog") is a discussion or informational website published on the World Wide Web consisting of discrete, often informal diary-style text entries (posts). Posts are typically displayed in reverse chronological order ...
s for the
Huffington Post ''HuffPost'' (formerly ''The Huffington Post'' until 2017 and sometimes abbreviated ''HuffPo'') is an American progressive news website, with localized and international editions. The site offers news, satire, blogs, and original content, and ...
. In 2013, she became the first student featured in The Chronicle of Higher Education’s Influence List, was listed on The Huffington Post’s most influential forces in higher education list, and in 2015
Planned Parenthood The Planned Parenthood Federation of America, Inc. (PPFA), or simply Planned Parenthood, is a nonprofit organization that provides reproductive health care in the United States and globally. It is a tax-exempt corporation under Internal Reve ...
awarded her their “Care. No Matter What.” Award. Pino has also helped co-write and introduce the Campus Accountability and Safety Act with Senator Kirsten Gillibrand and advised the
White House Task Force To Protect Students from Sexual Assault The White House Task Force to Protect Students from Sexual Assault was formed on January 22, 2014, after President Barack Obama directed the Office of the Vice President of the United States and the White House Council on Women and Girls to "s ...
. Ultimately in 2018, after a five-year federal investigation into its policies and procedures governing sexual assault and harassment cases and as a result of the work of Pino and others, UNC-Chapel Hill was found in violation Title IX. In 2020, UNC-Chapel Hill was also found in violation of the Clery Act, which resulted in a  $1.5 million fine in a settlement with the U.S. Department of Education after violating federal campus safety law for years. The review, which the university released in November 2019, found that “UNC misrepresented and under-reported campus crime statistics, including sexual assault, failed to properly alert the campus community to serious crimes and did not adequately operate its system of ensuring campus safety.” The results of the review became public weeks after an alarming campus sexual assault survey that revealed nearly half of young women in their fourth year or higher at UNC reported experiencing nonconsensual sexual touching or penetration during college.


Queer activism

Pino serves on the Board of Directors for Outwords and is currently serving as an Impact Producer for the film, Ahead of the Curve. She recently spoke at
Sundance Film Festival The Sundance Film Festival (formerly Utah/US Film Festival, then US Film and Video Festival) is an annual film festival organized by the Sundance Institute. It is the largest independent film festival in the United States, with more than 46,66 ...
on a panel for the film
My Name is Pauli Murray ''My Name Is Pauli Murray'' is an 2021 American documentary film, directed by Betsy West and Julie Cohen, written by West, Cohen, Talleah Bridges McMahon and Cinque Northern. It follows the life of lawyer and activist Pauli Murray. The film had ...
and Ahead of the Curve. Pino was awarded the 40 under 40: Queer Women of Washington from
The Washington Blade The ''Washington Blade'' is a lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender (LGBT) newspaper in the Washington metropolitan area. The ''Blade'' is the oldest LGBT newspaper in the United States and third largest by circulation, behind the ''Philadelp ...
in 2019.


Career

Since 2013, Pino has predominantly worked at non-profits in communications and policy at End Rape on Campus, the National Center for Lesbian Rights, and most recently at the Community Justice Action Fund.


End Rape on Campus

In 2013, Pino and Clark co-founded End Rape on Campus (EROC), an advocacy group for survivors 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. During her tenure at End Rape on Campus, Pino was the Director of Policy and Support as well as co-founder.


References


External links


AndreaPino.com

Twitter
{{DEFAULTSORT:Pino, Andrea. Living people American women's rights activists HuffPost writers and columnists University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill alumni 1992 births American people of Cuban descent American women columnists 21st-century American women