A rainbow of T-shirts hangs along the tree line in front of the Hanson Hall of Science, displaying the Clothesline Project. The semi-annual event was put together by the Office of Sexual Assault Prevention Education (OSAPE) on Wednesday, Oct. 1, in honor of Domestic Violence Awareness Month.
According to The Clothesline Project’s website, these communal displays started in 1990 by a group of women in Massachusetts. At the time, a new statistic was released stating that while 58,000 men were killed in the Vietnam War, 51,000 women were killed in the same time period from cases of domestic violence.
This information sparked a movement to raise awareness for women who have experienced violence.
The project has spread to many places around the world, growing increasingly popular on college campuses. OSAPE Program Director Zachary Draves has been running the Clothesline Project at Augustana for the past four years.
“It’s a very creative, artistic, visual way to capture people’s attention and raise their consciousness [and] curiosity. It’s not every day you walk on campus and see a clothesline of shirts being put up on display, and it’s up there for a purpose,” Draves said.
Students and staff designed shirts in support of those who have experienced domestic and or sexual violence. The T-shirts were organized by color, with orange representing stalking, red for sexual assault, yellow for dating violence and blue indicating intimate partner violence.
Everyone was encouraged to write a positive message or parts of their own story if they were willing. The T-shirts displayed messages such as “He, She, They We Survive”, “Speak Out” and “#Augie4Survivors.”
At the event was Pauline Gordon from Family Resources, an organization in the Quad Cities that provides resources, support and advocacy for individuals who have experienced trauma. According to their website, the social service organization has been serving the local community for over 175 years.
“I connect with Augustana as [a] confidential advisor on campus, and oftentimes partner with peer educators. And so today, their peer educators are hosting the clothesline event, which is meant to be a very powerful, silent movement to support survivors of essentially any form of violence,” Gordon said.
One of the students at the Clothesline Project event was Eddie Resendez, who was hanging up the shirts outside as they were being finished. Resendez is an event planner and peer educator in the OSAPE office.
“We do ‘Take Back the Night’, bystander intervention training and tabling all throughout the year,” Resendez said. “There’s different events, and just being a participant helps. It takes an army to prevent sexual assault and domestic violence.”
“Take Back the Night” is a rally held in the spring to advocate for survivors of domestic violence and spread awareness about campus sexual assault.
One of the upcoming events by OSAPE is the “Set Back the Expectation” football game. The game will be held at Augustana College on Saturday, Oct. 18, at 1 p.m.
