Author: Sharen Cervantes
Between April 13 and April 17, Occidental played host to a week-long string of events sponsored by Project S.A.F.E., a campus-wide organization whose primary goals are to educate members of the Oxy community about issues of sexual violence.
A partner of the Center for Gender Equity (CGE) and self-described prevention and support program, Project S.A.F.E. organized Take Back the Week in an effort to educate the Oxy community about different forms of sexual abuse, including rape and sexual assault.
Inspired by Take Back the Night, an international event intended to educate individuals about sexual exploitation, Take Back the Week aimed to break the silence surrounding sexual assault and other traditionally taboo subjects.
“Rape, sexual assault, and [other] similar crimes remain taboo subjects [and] often go unreported,” CGE student advisory board member Jacob Goldstein (junior) said. “Through our program, we hope to create a safe, empowering atmosphere where survivors can ‘shatter the silence’ surrounding their abuse, take back the night, and begin the healing process.”
The prevalence of sexual assault on post-secondary campuses is great. According to Associate Director of Intercultural Affairs and director of the CGE Naddia Palacios, statistics show that one in four women between the ages of 18 and 25 will be assaulted on university grounds. Her aim in staging this program was to promote awareness and increase a woman’s chance of survival if sexually assaulted. “We hosted two self-defense workshops this week,” Palacios said. “We also screened a film about femicide in the Congo, where girls are raped by both the Congolese military and foreign militias.”
In addition to offering free t-shirts and whistles under a canopy out on the quad, the program’s organizers – including Project S.A.F.E. program assistants Britt Karp and David Martinez – helped coordinate a candlelight vigil on Thursday night following a presentation by Katie Koestner in Johnson Hall. Koestner, a survivor of sexual assault spoke to Oxy students and staff about her experience with date rape during her first year in college.
The project organizers’ enthusiasm appears to have rubbed off on Oxy’s student body. “Take Back the Week was a great event,” Alma Garcia (first-year) said. “I didn’t make it in time to get a free shirt, but I did get a new whistle.”
Students then met out on the quad and marched to the Greek Bowl, where students who have been victim to rape and other forms of sexual abuse were granted a safe environment in which to share their stories. The speak-out held at the Greek Bowl was especially important, said Palacios, given that only sixteen percent of rape/assault survivors report the crime done against them. Thursday’s candlelight vigil granted women who would otherwise keep silent a forum in which to relieve the burden of their abuse secrets.
The reception with which Take Back the Week was met is largely due to extensive organization of “grassroots” efforts by both Karp and Martinez. “In planning events for Take Back the Week, we considered what we’d seen work and not work in the past, and we just went from there,” Karp (senior) said. “We also chose Thursday’s speaker and the movie screened earlier in the week.” Other efforts by program assistants to attempt to spread the word about Take Back the Week included, but were not limited to, peer-to-peer education which occurred during campus-wide classroom presentations.
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