Get the latest Syracuse news delivered right to your inbox.
Subscribe to our newsletter here.

Survivors of sexual and relationship violence gathered alongside their allies Wednesday evening for Syracuse University’s annual Take Back the Night event, which was hosted to offer a space for survivors to know they’re not alone.

During the night of healing and community building, Diana Varo-Lucero, a graduate student studying multimedia, photography and design who helped organize the event, said nighttime symbolizes “rejuvenation.”

“Take Back the Night is not just taking it back to the night where these tragedies happen. It’s also reminding ourselves that it’s never our fault. It’s never too late to heal. We can take back the night to also move forward with healing,” she said.

TBTN is the oldest international movement standing against all forms of sexual violence, according to its website. The mission of the nonprofit organization is to end “sexual assault, sexual abuse, trafficking, stalking, gender harassment, and relationship violence, and to support survivors in their healing journeys.”

Wednesday’s event, held indoors for the first time in the Schine Student Center’s Panasci Lounge, featured a student dance performance, denim decorating activity, ice cream and appetizers, a survivor speak-out, a plant watering release activity and a grounding room.

The planning committee has been brainstorming how to reimagine the event since November. The decision to hold TBTN in the Panasci Lounge was an intentional choice to “re-emphasize that it’s student-centered,” said Kayla Turner, a senior neuroscience and sociology major minoring in psychology who helped plan the event.

In previous years, TBTN looked different — attendees marched through campus with signs and rallied on the front steps of Hendricks Chapel. Event organizers — Varo-Lucero, Turner and Leslie Skeffington, the assistant director for sexual and relationship violence prevention at the Barnes Center at The Arch — said they reimagined the event to “put the planning in the hands of the students.”

“They really wanted a space for healing and community building. I think that speaks to a lot of social justice things that are going on in the world,” Skeffington said. “We need a space for ourselves to know we’re not alone.”

Skeffington said her role at the Barnes Center was created in January. She said Barnes had a full-time SRV prevention specialist before the COVID-19 pandemic, but that after the pandemic it had become a “group effort,” adding that a full-time position was needed. She said she works 40 hours a week and that her job is “very specific and intentional to SRV prevention.”

“There’s been this really long history of folks that do the work that I do thinking that it’s a one size fits all, presenting the same content to every single community, and it’s just not like that,” Skeffington said.

Students and survivors typically respond better to interactive activities like those at Wednesday’s event, rather than “click-through PowerPoint presentations,” Skeffington said.

The Rape, Abuse & Incest National Network reports that 13% of all undergraduate and graduate college students experience sexual assault or rape. RAINN found that college-age adults — students or not — are at “high risk” for sexual violence, with college-age women twice as likely to be sexually assaulted than robbed.

SU conducted an assessment of sexual and relationship violence on campus in a 2022 survey, which had more than 1,400 respondents total — about 6% of SU’s 2022 student population. Approximately 17% of the survey’s respondents reported experiencing sexual harassment, 10% reported experiencing non-consensual sexual contact, 6% reported experiencing relationship abuse and 4% reported having been stalked during their time at SU.

Turner, a member of the TBTN planning committee and director of relationship violence advocacy in SU’s Student Association, is a survivor of sexual violence and a self-proclaimed advocate. She said the theme of this year’s TBTN is the three R’s “reflection, redemption and reclamation.”

TBTN began in the 1970s and its earliest activists protested against sexual violence and lack of safety for women, according to its website. Skeffington said SU and other universities in the United States have held marches and survivor speak-outs for decades.

The event planning committee kept TBTN’s traditions in mind, Turner said, but sought to center the event around students and survivors by planning new activities to create “different avenues of healing.”

Varo-Lucero said she thinks having the survivor speak out in the same space as other activities allows students to “ventilate,” given the intensity of the topic. The planning committee decided to include a “grounding room” where attendees could speak with a staff therapist if they were feeling overwhelmed.

Lars Jendruschewitz | Assistant Photo Editor

Attendees engage in various activities, such as denim decorating. The event provided a safe space for survivors and allies.

Turner, Varo-Lucero and Skeffington all said the denim decorating activity was also planned very intentionally.

Denim Day is the longest-standing protest against sexual violence, Skeffington said. In Rome in 1992, an 18-year-old girl was raped by her 45-year-old driving instructor. She reported the rape, and he was convicted and sent to jail. But in 1999, the driving instructor appealed the sentence under a claim the sex was consensual. His conviction was overturned in the Italian High Court and he was released, according to Denim Day’s website.

“The judge’s statement was like, those jeans were so tight, there’s no way she couldn’t have helped to take them off,” Skeffington said.

Women in the Italian Parliament protested the judge’s decision by wearing jeans to work. The protest received international media attention and spurred movements worldwide.

The planning committee decided to incorporate denim into the event to remind attendees that there is no excuse for sexual assault.

“No matter what you wear, there’s no excuse for anyone to assault you,” Varo-Lucero said. “You’re seen and heard.”

Denim Day 2024 is on Wednesday, April 24. Millions of people worldwide will wear jeans “with a purpose,” according to its website.

“It’s important to keep that going. All those really harmful rape myths are still out there,” Skeffington said. “Maybe they’re not talked about as directly anymore, but they’re still out there.”

Turner said the plant-watering activity was also carefully thought out. Attendees had the opportunity to write down anything they wanted to release on dissolvable paper and put it in a container of water, which will then be used to water several plants in the Barnes Center, which is a symbol of growth, Varo-Lucero said.

Danis Cammett, a junior in Army ROTC said he attended TBTN because it’s a “phenomenal” event to support survivors, and also an opportunity for ROTC to “come together closer” with the rest of campus.

Cammett said he organized a 5K run — which is being held at 6:30 a.m. on April 11 outside of Hendricks — in honor of survivors of sexual violence survivors in the military. He said sexual violence is a “huge problem” in the U.S. military.

“These people have to be looked after as survivors. We need to take a stand against sexual assault, sexual harassment,” he said. “That doesn’t just mean taking a stand when that happens or after it happens, but that means paying attention to behaviors that we have in our everyday community.”

Turner — who is graduating next month — said Wednesday’s event was “bittersweet” because it’s the last one she helped coordinate, but that it’s been amazing to see how far SU’s campus has come in the past four years.

“It’s a very beautiful (event) because I think resilience and reclamation of survivorship is something that starts with being able to amplify the voices of the oftentimes unheard and unbelieved,” Turner said.

DISCLAIMER: Danis Cammett previously contributed to The Daily Orange News section. He no longer influences the editorial content of the News section.

Published on April 11, 2024 at 1:47 am

Contact Ahna: arflemin@syr.edu