As Alyssa Baumann stepped up to the microphone at Beaumont Tower on Friday night, the women lingering in the field stopped their conversations and listened.
“It’s not OK that a woman is raped every two minutes,” said Baumann, a sexual assault counselor from The Listening Ear Crisis Intervention Center, 1017 E. Grand River Ave. “We shouldn’t have to make T-shirts. We shouldn’t have to march. We shouldn’t have to do any of this.”
Baumann spoke during the premarch rally for Take Back The Night.
The march was part of the Take Back The Night campaign to demand an end to rape, sexual assault, domestic violence, incest and sexual harassment.
Women dressed in blue Take Back The Night T-shirts, holding signs saying “My short skirt isn’t a reason to rape me,” and “No sex without consent,” began marching. They marched from Beaumont Tower, through campus and ended at East Lansing City Hall, 410 Abbott Road.
Other activities throughout the day included the Mid-Michigan Clothesline Project display at Beaumont field, an open-mic session, a candlelight vigil, a men’s forum and a postmarch rally.
Take Back The Night began in 1978 in San Francisco when 5,000 women rallied and marched against all forms of male violence against women. Since then, people throughout the country have planned and participated in Take Back The Night events.
Diane Windischman, coordinator of MSU’s Sexual Assault Crisis and Safety Education program, said it’s important to break the silence and speak out against rape.
“Historically, there was a belief that women shouldn’t speak out if they were raped,” she said. “But in the 1970s when Take Back The Night began, women realized that we have a right to walk through our streets freely and a right to live freely in our towns without being afraid.
“When women spoke out on the steps of the state Capitol about their stories, it was a way to break the silence and show people rape needs to be stopped.”
Chelsea Hasenburg, an Acquaintance Rape Education Advocate and ASMSU Academic Assembly James Madison College representative, said the advocate group is lobbying to create mandatory rape and sexual assault education seminars for all first-year students at MSU.
A December 2000 study by the U.S. Justice Department’s National Institute of Justice and Bureau of Justice Statistics said 35 of every 1,000 women on campus will experience complete or attempted rape during a school year.
Hasenburg said events such as Take Back the Night are especially important for freshmen, who are adjusting to a new atmosphere.
“Many of the sexual assault cases on campus happen to freshman women during their first few months of school,” the international relations freshman said. “If this happens, they will most likely have low self-esteem for the rest of the year.”
Economics sophomore Scott Johnson said Take Back The Night helps men stop and think about a problem they wouldn’t normally think about too.
“Obviously as men, there’s some things we don’t take seriously,” Johnson said. “But events like this help us take an active role in talking about it, which might help us deal with the problem.”
