Mercer Tries to Raise Awareness About Sexual Violence in Community

They marched and shouted, “One, two, three, four. We won’t take it anymore! Five, six, seven, eight. No more violence! No more hate!”

Recently, a group of Mercer and Wesleyan students participated in the “Take Back the Night” event as a response to the national month of sexual assault awareness.

They met at Washington Memorial Park. Some of them were sexual violence survivors and they shared their stories during the event.

“‘Take Back the Night’ is an opportunity for them to have a voice,” Senior Lecturer and Staff Psychologist Emily Piassick said. “For some people, being able to say something out loud and share is very powerful.”

TBTN is a national event focusing on eliminating sexual and domestic violence in all forms. It has a long history chasing back to the 1970s, according to the TBTN official website.

“Lots of college campuses have ‘Take Back the Night’ on their campuses,” Piassick said.

Aiming to raise awareness of sexual violence on campus, Mercer’s Sexual Assault, Hazing and Alcohol Prevention Education has organized different activities every year, Piassick said.

For example, SHAPE organized an event called “Ask Me About It” from Feb. 8 to 12 this year.

“That was a big campus-wide kind of like a bingo game where students were wearing buttons that had information about the different squares on the bingo card and students were helping to educate other students about Title IX issues and interpersonal violence,” Piassick said.

Last year “in November, we did something like the ‘Red Flag Campaign,’ which addresses relationship violence and so there were flags all over Cruz Plaza and information about relationship violence,” she said.

“I think that programming of this type of nature is more interactive that SHAPE tries to do,” she said. “Having students take ownership is a more effective means of educating students versus being lectured about.”

In addition, Melissa Nunn from Mercer’s Title IX office has been training peer advisors to educate freshman students about sexual violence within the first six weeks of school, Piassick said.

But she said we need to do more to address the issue about sexual violence on campus and encourage reporting.

“I think lots and lots of talking and educating needs to happen,” she said. “I think things need to be looked at and viewed as a systematic issue like what we are doing as a university that allowing this to be oaky and it’s not okay.”

“I think the judicial process has its place and they’re doing everything they can to uphold the rules and the policy and make Mercer a community of respect. That’s what’s expected here,” she said.

SHAPE will continue its work and the committee will meet at the end of May and the beginning of June to plan out the events for next year, she said.

After the professional staffs of SHAPE come out with the schedule and themes, the student members will work on the activities, she said.

“If the professional staff has an idea, we bring forwards, see how other students feel about it,” she said. “We involve our students because they are the ones who know what’s gonna work, what’s not gonna work.”