Take Back the Night!

I just wanted to make a quick comment on Thursday night. We had a critical mass for Take Back the Night (~35),and then a really fantastic speak out that lasted until midnight. Unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend the speak-out, but I did yell my way through the hour and a half long march through campus buildings and spaces, and up Thayer st. It was a powerful event, with students of different genders, and I hope it's as good (or maybe even better!) next year.

My favorite chant of the (very loud) march was one made up by a participant--"8-6-4-2, Brown has rape, too. 1-2-3-4, we won't take it anymore!" Recognizing that sexual assault occurs and that we as individual students have a responsibility to fight the culture of rape is really important. There's a huge tendency to minimize rape, either by ascribing it as being inevitable based on a situation, or as a trivial problem (I'm thinking of the yells down my hall saying that an exam "raped" them). There are two parts that need to be worked on--the culture, and the policies. As far as Brown's messed up policies, I'm a big fan of the SATForce's work on campus, so if this is an issue that you want to take action on, I'm sure they could use them.

Back to the event, there was definitely a certain amount of hostility to the march, particularly in certain areas of campus. People view events about stopping sexual assault as a comment about them specifically, as opposed to the culture in general.

This may not have been the most intelligible post ever made--but the weather is nice, my brain is fried, and the work has to get done. I hope you're all having an amazing reading period! If other people have thoughts on this, feel free to let me know, or comment--there's definitely some interesting and conflicting views about stopping sexual assault.