Teal ribbons and campus TV ads, courtesy of the Center for Advocacy, Prevention and Education, filled the campus landscape in April, honoring Sexual Assault Awareness and Action Month.
As the main campus program advocating for SAAM, CAPE’s efforts were highlighted this April through insights shared through email by Prevention and Education Director Elizabeth Kennedy and student worker Bella Cherney.
Kennedy defined SAAM as a call to attention and to the fact that sexual abuse, assault and harasment is a widespread problem that affects every person and community.
“SAAM aims to raise public awareness about sexual violence and educate communities on how to prevent it,” Kennedy said in an email.
According to the website, “Our Wave, a Safe Harbor for Sexual Harm,” the origin of SAAM can be attributed to many periods of history. For the most part, gender-based violence surrounding sexual assault seemed to enter mainstream feminist discussion in the 1970s’, when women’s sexual freedom was a recognized topic of national conversation.
According to the National Sexual Violence Resource Center, SAAM was officially established in the United States in 2001.
CAPE representatives said that, currently, their main goals for SAAM activities on campus is prevention, but also for students to understand they are supported and have resources.
“We certainly hope that our community learns about the great resources that CAPE as well as other OSU offices offer related to gender-based violence prevention and support efforts,” Kennedy said. “Everyone plays a role in prevention.”
Bella Cherney is a student worker at CAPE and works as a prevention and education outreach assistant. Cherney runs the CAPE social media and said that she believes student involvement to be very important in creating a caring culture on campus.
“I think student involvement in events like the Denim Day Activity Fair and other events to spread awareness is very important because it creates a supportive culture of consent on campus with every person who supports and participates,” said Cherney in an email. “Through these events and education we are working to create a culture that does not allow gender-based violence to continue.”
CAPE’s biggest event of April is their Denim Day Activity Fair which was held on Denim day on April 30.
Denim Day, according a CAPE instagram post, is a day observed at the end of April in protest of a 1992 Italian court case that ruled the rape victim’s tight fitting jeans implied consent.
Out of protest the next day, Italian women wore jeans to work, and since then people across the world recognize Denim Day as a day of protest against gender-based, sexually charged violence by wearing jeans.
Cherney said CAPE spreads awareness through educational social media campaigns and distributing survivor ribbon pins to every Cultural Resource Center, the Basic Needs Center and every Greek chapter on campus.
These efforts are all to increase student involvement which, Kennedy said, is incredibly important to SAAM.
“I believe that student involvement is the key ingredient to success for any event, particularly events based in social justice and activism movements,” Kennedy said. “We want everyone to know that Beavers Give a Dam about preventing gender-based violence.”
