Vigil raises awareness of campus assaults

Two of the people closest to me survived sexual assault. Two of the people that I care about the most have been hurt, betrayed and traumatized by an experience so personal to them that sharing it is painful in its own right. I’ve seen what it does to them, the way they blame themselves, the way it builds up inside them and the way our culture treats them. They are the ones that inspired me to participate in the Men’s Vigil on Nov. 8th during Take Back the Night—an event hosted by Women’s Concerns House and Club.
This was my first year participating in Sexual Assault Awareness Week, and my first time at the Men’s Vigil. There were eight of us there, with Ben Privot (’10) acting as the facilitator for the discussion. Right off the bat, Ben asked how many of us knew someone, or had been personally  sexually assaulted. Everyone’s hand went up. When he rephrased the question to ask how many of us knew someone who had been assaulted—or had been ourselves sexually assaulted—at Drew, three or four hands remained in the air.
That set the mood for our discussion. We realized from the very beginning that there is something terribly wrong with our culture, both here at Drew and in the world in general.
Our discussion ranged all across the board, from the victim-blaming our society has instilled in this issue—where survivors are all too often the ones who feel the guilt for pain inflicted on them—to supporting survivors by putting our own emotions aside in order to better hear theirs.
One of the worst things I have ever had to do was legitimize that a loved one of mine was raped so that that person wouldn’t feel like a “bad victim.” I think we can all agree that this is something no one should ever have to do.
In the end, we came up with a large number of very important things that need to change quite badly, both at this school and everywhere else. It is quite probable that there are people reading this who have not let themselves believe they have been sexually assaulted and that there are people who do not realize that they have been the perpetrators of sexual violence because they’ve been taught that it’s okay to take, and that consent at the beginning of a sexual encounter is the be-all and end-all.
As the night went on, I came to realize more and more just what Take Back the Night means and how incredibly important it actually is.
What happened that night was the renewal of a commitment by the inhabitants of The Forest to, well, to take back the night. To make the night safe again for everyone at all times. To reinvent our old hat definitions about consent and rape, to destroy the rape culture that pervades everything in our society, to end victim -blaming, to stop the myth about the man with the trench coat in the bushes and to make the changes where they need to happen the most—in our day-to-day, basic interactions.
What the Men’s Vigil really taught was that everyone has a role to play—changing culture is a tall order. Whether it’s something as simple and powerful as asking a person if they want to dance instead of forcing yourself onto them,or something more complex like creating a new campus-wide definition of sexual assault, everyone has something that they can and, I believe, should be doing. This is our campus, and it belongs to everyone, no matter who they are.
I encourage everyone to support the Women’s Concerns Club and House’s work, and all of the diversity-based groups we have right here, because it is in large part due to their continued efforts that these conversations continue to be had, that ideas are generated and actions are taken.
We have an opportunity here to make a real difference about something that has effected virtually everyone on this campus.
If our group at the Men’s Vigil is any indicator, as I believe it might be bearing in mind the fact that one fourth of women will be sexually assaulted during their time in college,then all of us have been hurt, in some way, by an act of sexual violence. Our friends and lovers, our classmates, the people we party with, dance with, go to events with, eat and laugh with—they are the victims. We, all of us, are the ones who can make things right. There is hope, there are people who care. Change is inevitable.

Stephen Thompson is a junior Philosophy and Political Science double major.