“I grew up as a survivor of both domestic abuse and sexual assault, and so it’s something that’s really guided what I want to do,” lead organizer and social work senior Sierra Petersen said. “I think that it’s really important to have a place for survivors and for supporters to come and learn about this stuff.”

Petersen said one of the big goals for Take Back the Night is to be a collaboration between campus resources and Lansing resources. Throughout the evening, tables for campus organizations, like the Women’s Resource Center, and community organizations such as Planned Parenthood and The Listening Ear in Lansing, were available to students to inquiry about what services were available around them.

“General awareness is something I want people to take from this event,” social work senior and The Listening Ear volunteer Sara Haggerty said. “But I also want to empower survivors so that they won’t be crushed by themselves and that they know there are services out there that can help them.”

Stephanie DiPonio, MSU alumna and multiple-time Take Back the Night attendee and volunteer, said Take Back the Night is a unique event for her because while she works in the field, she loves Take Back the Night because of the public awareness aspect.

“I’ve been volunteering with sexual assault work since around 2011,” DiPonio said. “So this is something I’m really passionate about and while I love working with survivors. I love Take Back the Night because it really brings a lot of awareness and education to this issue, and I also feel like the concept of ‘taking back the night’ and reclaiming it is really powerful.”

Many exercises and events were also available and free to students in the Union through Take Back the Night, ranging from a healing yoga workshop to a talk by keynote speaker and creator of Guerilla Feminism, Lachrista Greco.

“This year’s theme is to bring it back and making it all about survivors, because last year it was about consent,” Petersen said. “This year we really wanted it to be about self-care, which is why we did the healing yoga and why we brought in Lachrista because she talks about that a lot.”

MSU alumnus Steve Bon said he started attending Take Back the Night in 1984, after graduating with a bachelor’s degree in social work in 1980, and he said he tries to make it out to the event every year.

“I participate in volunteer work because I feel like it’s part of my calling in social work, that it’s part of my job to spread the word and help awareness,” Bon said. “A lot of sexual assault happens behind closed doors and is quiet and secretive and I just feel like being able to hear people speak out gives people who might not necessarily be informed on these topics a way to get informed, which helps in the prevention process.”

Petersen said the most important part of Take Back the Night is providing a safe space for survivors of sexual assault, but also for those who are not survivors, to come out and become informed.

Petersen said participating in events like Take Back the Night offers students the chance to be educated on how to deal with sexual assault and to empower survivors of it, instead of being bystanders to a crime that statistically affects one in four women at MSU.