Events such as “Take Back The Night March” display importance of Women’s Safety Week

More than half of all women – 51 percent – will be physically assaulted during their lifetime, according to the National Institute of Justice Center for Disease Control and Prevention.

Eighteen percent of these women will be raped.

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Although women cannot “take back the nights” that these violent acts occurred against women, they can do their best to prevent such incidences from happening again, which is the goal of Women’s Safety Week.

Members of the Women’s Center and campus organization Women’s Services collaborated for what they hope will be a very informative, as well as cathartic, week of events.

The week will include such events as a video presentation, “Interview With a Rapist” at 7 p.m. Wednesday in Activity Room D of the Student Center, and two lectures given by prevention educator Terry Lilley.

The lectures, “Men’s Space” and “A Man’s Gotta Do What A Man’s Gotta Do,” will concentrate on a man’s position in ending violence in society.

Lilley, who has been one of the few males in the overwhelmingly female population of the Women’s Center for seven years, sees the college audience as an important target in the fight against violence.

“This [violence against women] is something that is typically looked at as a women’s problem,” said Lilley. “It’s important to inform students of their responsibility.

“College is the place where people begin to define themselves and go beyond what their parents have told [them] is right.”

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While presentations such as the alarming “Interview With a Rapist,” and the lectures by Lilley are essential to awareness on women’s safety, artistic projects are an equally important part of the week.

“We want to reach survivors and give them the opportunity to participate in activities that will help them to reach areas different than the levels they may reach cognitively,” said Kathy Livingston, Rape Crisis Service coordinator. “We want them to have the ability to express emotions they might not be able to talk about.”

In order to accomplish this, the coordinators have added to Women’s Safety Week several activities that allow women to express their emotions artistically.

At 4 p.m. Tuesday in the Interfaith Center, survivors and significant others will have the chance to express their feelings on T-shirts to be displayed in the Faner Breezeway.

While the making of these T-shirts, known as the “Clothesline Project,” is the most well-known and longest-running artistic project, there are other opportunities for artistic expression.

On Wednesday, masks constructed by survivors will be displayed in the Student Center. Survivors will have the chance to express themselves lyrically during a poetry reading that will follow T-shirt making on Tuesday.

The week will complete with the “Take Back the Night March,” a nearly 20-year-old event that the Women’s Center executive director Camille Dorris said essentially sums up the goals of Women’s Safety Week.

Participants in the march will carry candles, flashlights and drums and banners created prior to the march. The march, which will begin at the Interfaith Center and end in Town Square Pavilion, will be followed by a rally featuring a speech by SIUC Black American Studies professor Pamela Smoot.

“Unfortunately, campus is no different than the community as far as sexual assault and domestic violence is concerned,” said Dorris. “A lot of people are not aware of the alarming rate in which this is happening. It covers all walks of life and has no boundaries; that’s why it is so important to be aware.”

Reporter Jessica Yorama can be reached at [email protected]