Students passing through the UC atrium this week will notice a clothesline hanging in front of Rooster’s windows. Shirts and tank tops hang from the line, all of them sporting messages and poems related to sexual assault. The clothesline is a part of this year’s sexual assault awareness week at Carleton.
Maddie Adams, vice-president (student issues) organized the project among others to create dialogue about sexual assault among Carleton students.
“It is an initiative started by the Ottawa Coalition to End Violence Against Women (OCTEVAW) and they started this initiative where it’s kind of a way to air your dirty laundry on the line,” she said. “It’s positive messaging around consent and survivor support.”
Adams said anyone is welcome to visit the clothesline this week and attach their own message.
“When people are passing by or people just come up to the table to see what’s going [on] you have a conversation with them about sexual assault and how sexual assault can be stopped or how, what is consent, what is needed to end sexual assault,” she said.
“There’s also been some really powerful messages from survivors of sexual assault who have written poems or they’ve written messages to their abuser,” she added.
This year’s sexual assault awareness campaign is called “beFOREPLAYask.” Adams said she hopes the new name will draw attention to the annual event.
“People see the word ‘foreplay,’ they know it’s something to do with sex essentially so that was kind of our main reason behind it,” she said. “We really wanted to emphasize the consent part, so the ‘ask’ is . . . one of the most important parts of the slogan in that you just need to keep up that open dialogue and continually asking for consent and permission.”
Adams said CUSA will continue to use material from the sexual assault awareness campaign “Think! Engage! Change! Let’s end sexual violence.”
“CUSA and Equity Services worked really hard on developing it and we’re not getting rid of it, there’s a banner still hanging outside of the food court and there’s material that is around that uses the messaging,” Adams said. “However, you can think, engage, and change about any topic that’s controversial.”
She added this year’s sexual assault awareness week is more interactive.
Adams said CUSA worked with the Carleton University Womyn’s Centre, the CUSA Gender and Sexuality Resource Centre (GSRC), the OCTEVAW, Venus Envy and the executive directors of the blog Feministing.
She added Equity Services and Carleton safety both sponsored the week.
“I think the biggest thing is creating a dialogue and a conversation around something that isn’t a topic that people don’t want to have a conversation or dialogue about is the key message for this week,” she said.
Third-year psychology student Shawnna Brooks said she attended GSRC’s Addressing Violence In Queer Communities workshop Tuesday.
Brooks said she gained more awareness about violence within and outside the queer community.
“There’s still stereotyping and racism within queer communities as well outside,” she said. “If you’re [a] white cis person in the community you’re fine but if you’re any other colour in the community then you have double hate from people from outside.”
Adams said CUSA has one week planned for their sexual assault awareness campaign but she wants people to know there is support available throughout the year.
“One of the reasons why we do sexual assault awareness week in September is unfortunately during frosh week there is sometimes a high incident of sexual assault so we want to make sure survivors during the week are made aware that there’s resources available there’s support, there’s all these different things on campus and off campus that can help people deal with the incident that may have happened to them,” she said.
Merissa Taylor-Meissner, programming co-ordinator of the GRSC said she decided to run the workshop because she thought it was important to represent the LGBTQ+ community when talking about sexual violence.
“People shared a lot of their personal experiences, and we ended the discussion by talking about ways to liberate ourselves and heal from violence, which I think was very powerful,” she said. “I hope that people realized that it is important to seek support if they are experiencing violence, regardless of their identities and experiences.”
