Students from across the country gathered at UPrep on March 7, 2026, for the third annual Student Organized Consent Conference in Seattle (SOCCS), a student-led event focused on expanding awareness of consent and its impact in school communities.

The conference was organized by six UPrep students, including seniors Auggie Reed and Sophie Whittaker, who created this year’s theme, “Breath of Hope,” and brought together attendees from as far away as Texas, Hawaii and Washington, D.C.

“We as leaders organize speakers and workshop leaders to come and talk about consent and how important it is in this world,” Whittaker said.

The day began with a keynote speech from Katie Koestner, a leading voice in sexual assault awareness and one of the first survivors to speak nationally about date rape. In her speech, she described how difficult it was to get schools to take action to support victims.

“She had to travel the country and talk to all these deans, and it was just really unresponsive, and she had to grapple with them not caring,” Reed said.

Along with keynote speakers, students attended smaller, discussion-based workshops.

“Most are conversational. Some have activities,” Whittaker said. “But it’s pretty much just being able to have this smaller space to talk about consent.

Reed led a workshop titled “Boys dating boys,” which explored media representations of masculinity. Organizers hope that these conversations leave a lasting impact on participants.

“I hope that they take away the importance of talking about consent, incorporating what we teach and what we want to project from our conference and take that into their lives,” Whittaker said. 

Reed saw the conference’s impact in how students responded to the event.

“Everyone who came that hadn’t been before left wanting to go again, with thoughts of like, wow, that was really good,” Reed said.