Lady Gaga just gave one of the most emotionally powerful performances in Oscar history.
At the 88th Academy Awards, Lady Gaga gave the most important and powerful Oscar performance since last year's "Glory" by John Legend and Common.
Reminiscent of last year's showstopping, politically charged performance of "Glory" from the Oscar-nominated film "Selma," Gaga brought the house down with her rendition of "Til It Happens to You," her Oscar-nominated song from the Oscar-nominated documentary "The Hunting Ground," about sexual assault on college campuses.
Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images.
Gaga was introduced by none other than Vice President Joe Biden, who, after uproarious applause and a standing ovation, gave a short speech that many sexual assault activists and survivors never thought they'd hear from such a high-ranking political figure, let alone on the Oscars stage.
Vice President Joe Biden onstage during the 88th Annual Academy Awards. Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images.
"Despite significant progress over the last few years, too many women and men, on and off college campuses, are still victims of sexual abuse," Biden said, calling for people to take a simple pledge: "I will intervene in situations when consent has not or cannot be given."
Gaga took to the stage to sing, the emotional nature of the song visible on her face.
She began her performance alone, seated at a white piano, with a stark black backdrop.
Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images.
Then, as the song built and the music swelled, Gaga was joined on stage by dozens of survivors of rape and sexual assault.
Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images.
It was raw, heart-wrenching, positively earth-shaking, and while "Til It Happens to You" didn't take home the award for Best Original Song (that honor went to Sam Smith's James Bond theme "Writing's On The Wall"), it was a moment that spoke to something much, much bigger.
While Gaga's performance was emotionally and visually captivating, the issue at its core is frighteningly invisible.
The song was written for the critically acclaimed documentary "The Hunting Ground," a film that takes an intimate and startling look at sexual assault on college campuses in the United States.
The film focuses mainly on two students at the University of North Carolina who were sexually assaulted and later became strong anti-rape activists while filing a lawsuit against their school.
Univesity of North Carolina, which features heavily in the film. Photo by Streeter Lecka/Getty Images.
"The Hunting Ground" raises many difficult and important questions about the issue of sexual assault. Why does it go underreported? Why do the alleged rapists get away with it? And, importantly, why do universities often go out of their way to protect students who are accused of rape, while ignoring and often blaming the victims?
In a survey of more than 150,000 students, 23% of the women said they have experienced some form of unwanted sexual contact.
That's just about 1 in 4. If that doesn't shock you, maybe this will: 34% of female seniors at the University of Michigan reported experiencing unwanted sexual contact, 32% at Yale, and 29% at Harvard.
The survey reveals that even the best schools in the country aren't immune to this tragic and horrifying occurrence.
"The results warrant the attention and concern of everybody in our community," Drew Faust, president of Harvard said in a statement. "Sexual assault is intolerable, and we owe it to one another to confront it openly, purposefully and effectively. This is our problem."
Joe Biden with a rape victim in 2014 at the launch of the "It's on Us" campaign to prevent campus sexual assault. Photo by Nicholas Kamm/AFP/Getty Images.
Sexual assault might seem like the sort of crime that should always be reported, but it's actually severely underreported.
That's partly because of institutional efforts at universities that make things worse for the victims who report incidents instead of helping them get justice. Sexual assault is one of the only crimes where the victim often ends up on trial, their whole sexual history and personality laid bare and combed through by people looking for any shred of evidence that they brought their assault on themselves or were somehow to blame for it. Guilty until proven innocent.
Unfortunately, while sexual assault on college campuses remains a huge problem, as Gaga sang in front of millions of viewers at the Academy Awards, survivors who want to speak out have to do so while swimming against a current of guilt, isolation, and shaming peers who tell them to simply get over it.
Not to mention they have to go up against institutions seemingly committed to, at best, ignoring their pleas for help and, at worst, covering them up.
Students at UCLA held a rally on "Denim Day," which commemorates a rape victim case being overturned in 1998 because she was wearing jeans. Photo by David McNew/Getty Images.
A study published last year found that university reports of sexual assault increase by approximately 44% after the university is audited, which means that these institutions may be covering up, underreporting, or otherwise downplaying an astonishing number of cases.
Corey Rayburn Yung, a law professor at the University of Kansas who helped conduct the study, told Vocativ how she interprets the data:
“When it comes to sexual assault and rape, the norm for universities and colleges is to downplay the situation and the numbers... The result is students at many universities continue to be attacked and victimized, and punishment isn’t meted out to the rapists and sexual assaulters.”
Problems as systemic as this one don't get solved until enough people are talking about it and it reaches a breaking point.
Last night's performance was a new venue in which to talk about it. A big one.
Campus sexual assault affects all of us.
Even if it hasn't affected your life personally, it's probably affected the life of someone you know, even if you aren't aware of it. And none of us should be OK with the number of women who report being sexually assaulted at institutions of learning that should be safe spaces for everyone.
When some of us are unsafe, we're all unsafe. Colleges and universities are where people go to make themselves better, to learn and grow as people. Not to have their lives upturned by trauma and their education compromised by an institution (that they pay thousands of dollars to attend) working against them.
The message that booms from Lady Gaga's lyrics is a stark and simple one: "You simply don't know what this is like, how bad it is, how painful it can be, until it happens to you."
Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images.
The Frenchman's monologue was absolutely spot on 
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If not for that darn silver....
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There's a reason why some people can perfectly copy accents, and others can't
Turns out, there's a neurodivergent link.
A woman in black long sleeve shirt stands in front of mirror.
Have you ever had that friend who goes on vacation for four days to London and comes back with a full-on Queen's English posh accent? "Oooh I left my brolly in the loo," they say, and you respond, "But you're from Colorado!" Well, there are reasons they (and many of us) do that, and usually it's on a pretty subconscious level.
It's called "accent mirroring," and it's actually quite common with people who are neurodivergent, particularly those with ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder). According Neurolaunch, the self-described "Free Mental Health Library," "Accent mirroring, also known as accent adaptation or phonetic convergence, is the tendency to unconsciously adopt the accent or speech patterns of those around us. This linguistic chameleon effect is not unique to individuals with ADHD, but it appears to be more pronounced and frequent in this population."
Essentially, when people have conversations, we're constantly "scanning" for information—not just the words we're absorbing, but the inflection and tone. "When we hear an accent, our brains automatically analyze and categorize the phonetic features, prosody, and intonation patterns," writes Neurolaunch. For most, this does result in copying the accent of the person with whom we're speaking. But those with ADHD might be more sensitive to auditory cues. This, "coupled with a reduced ability to filter out or inhibit the impulse to mimic…could potentially explain the increased tendency for accent mirroring."
While the article explains further research is needed, they distinctly state that, "Accent mirroring in individuals with ADHD often manifests as an unconscious mimicry of accents in social situations. This can range from subtle shifts in pronunciation to more noticeable changes in intonation and speech rhythm. For example, a person with ADHD might find themselves unconsciously adopting a Southern drawl when conversing with someone from Texas, even if they’ve never lived in the South themselves."
People are having their say online. On the subreddit r/ADHDWomen, a thread began: "Taking on accents is an ADHD thing?" The OP shares, "My whole life, I've picked up accents. I, myself, never noticed, but everyone around me would be like, 'Why are you talking like that??' It could be after I watched a show or movie with an accent or after I've traveled somewhere with a different accent than my 'normal.'
They continue, "Apparently, I pick it up fast, but it fades out slowly. Today... I'm scrolling Instagram, I watch a reel from a comedian couple (Darcy and Jeremy. IYKYK) about how Darcy (ADHD) picks up accents everywhere they go. It's called ADHD Mirroring??? And it's another way of masking."
(The OP is referring to Darcy Michaels and his husband Jeremy Baer, who are both touring comedians based in Canada.)
Hundreds of people on the Reddit thread alone seem to relate. One comments, "Omfg I've done this my whole life; I'll even pick up on the pauses/spaces when I'm talking to someone who is ESL—but English is my first language lol."
Sometimes, it can be a real issue for those around the chameleon. "I accidentally mimicked a waitress's weird laugh one time. As soon as she was out of earshot, my family started to reprimand me, but I was already like 'oh my god I don’t know why I did that, I feel so bad.'"
Many commenters on TikTok were shocked to find out this can be a sign of ADHD. One jokes, "Omg, yes, at a store the cashier was talking to me and she was French. She's like 'Oh are you French too? No, I'm not lol. I'm very east coast Canada."
And some people just embrace it and make it work for them. "I mirror their words or phrase! I’m 30. I realized I start calling everyone sweetie cause my manager does & I work at coffee shop."
This article originally appeared in May.