St. Thomas students have become accustomed to seeing a clothesline on the lower quad hung with shirts near the end of each April. But if they take the time to look closer, they will see statements about sexual assault awareness.
St. Thomas hosted several events to promote Sexual Assault Awareness Month, including the Clothesline Project. Students, faculty and staff participated in Denim Day — an annual event that returned to St. Thomas this year — on April 27 by wearing jeans to raise awareness of rape and sexual assault. Students also colored pages with designs meant to encourage survivors of sexual assault, such as, “You are not alone.”
Sexual Assault Prevention Coordinator Emily Erickson helped plan the events and believes it is important for students to recognize sexual assault as a problem all year long.
“While April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, sexual assault happens every single day in our communities,” Erickson said. “I think it’s an opportunity to raise awareness and give students who care about this issue opportunities to engage and people who want to learn more opportunities to learn.”
The Feminist Community group on campus collaborated with Erickson to create these events. FemCom co-facilitators senior Jazzmine Jackson and juniors Carlee Diedrich and Cari Monroe set up the Clothesline Project and stood in the lower quad during convo hour on April 26 and 28 to answer students’ questions about the project and sexual assault.
Monroe believes these events are necessary because the topic is not often talked about openly.
“I think it opens up a nice dialogue about sexual assault on college campuses because it is such a huge problem,” Monroe said. “It tends to be pushed under the rug, so these events kind of start that conversation and bring awareness that this is actually a problem.”
Sophomore Emily Schildgen noticed the project in the quad on her way to class. She said that she remembers seeing the clothesline up last year when she was a first-year.
“I think it’s really cool that St. Thomas is showing that this is a problem,” Schildgen said. “It’s good that students can see this, even if they don’t know what it means at first.”
Erickson and FemCom noted the importance of having men participate in these events. One in four girls and one in six boys will be sexually assaulted before they turn 18 years old. Jackson said the events on campus are open to everyone.
“Sexual assault isn’t limited to women; it can happen to anyone. These events hopefully show that people don’t need to go through it alone, whether they are a man or a woman,” Jackson said.
Another annual event for Sexual Assault Awareness Month is Take Back the Night, where students march around the school and chant to raise awareness of sexual assault on campus. This year’s rally was scheduled April 28 but was cancelled due to bad weather. Diedrich said this event can be a very powerful experience for students.
“I think even if you haven’t been sexually assaulted, as a woman there’s probably been a time in your life where you felt very afraid or threatened simply because you were a woman alone at night, and that’s really what Take Back the Night is rallying against,” Diedrich said.
Erickson hopes students will take the opportunity to learn more about these issues and learn how to support someone who has experienced sexual assault.
“The more we can do as a community to find out how do we prevent this from happening in the first place the better,” Erickson said. “Starting with believing and saying, ‘I’m sorry this happened to you; I’m glad you came to me, and here are places you can go for help.’ I think that would be a great way to support survivors.”
Counseling and Psychological Services is available on campus to help students who have been sexually assaulted. St. Thomas also advertises off-campus resources to students, including Sexual Offense Services in St. Paul and the Sexual Violence Center in Minneapolis and Chaska. A text line, Love is Respect, is also available for receiving confidential support.
Claire Noack can be reached at noac8702@stthomas.edu.