Building on efforts from Denim Day

With Sexual Assault awareness month and a year filled with discussion around the Pat Hall incident both coming to a close, it’s important, now more than ever, that we all support survivors of sexual assault.

This week the IWL, CSB Senate and CERTS collaborated on a Denim Day event, inspired by the movement sparked in Italy after their Supreme Court overturned a rape case based on the fact that the survivor was wearing tight jeans.

The event encouraged everyone to wear denim in solidarity with survivors, and tabling included the opportunity to write messages to survivors on jeans to be hung up.

While the event brought attention to sexual assault as an issue, which is undoubtably important, there is more all of us can do than simply wear a jean jacket one day a year. The denim day event was a fantastic way for our community to show support for survivors on campus and it’s inspiring to see so many show up.

Despite the event’s success, one event can never make systematic change without individual action by everyone involved.

Most survivors, including myself, know that the vast majority of people around us support us and understand that sexual assault is wrong.

Despite that, most people aren’t taking active steps to go beyond basic levels of encouragement. In September, over 400 students showed up for the protest outside of the Reef because of the Pat Hall story. Why didn’t all of those people go attend a free and easy bystander intervention program?

I’m not asking for anything major­­ —it doesn’t even necessarily have to require leaving campus:

1. CERTS has held several bystander intervention training sessions—go attend the next one, even if it’s next semester.

2. Donate to Anna Marie’s Alliance, a woman’s shelter in St. Cloud that helps women who were victims of domestic abuse.

3. Watch the documentaries “The Hunting Ground,” “Audrie & Daisy” or “Athlete A” to educate yourself on issues and current events surrounding the topic of sexual assault.

4. Educate yourself on the sexual assault hotline (800-656-HOPE) and other resources on RAINN.org

Each of these take anywhere from five minutes to two hours.

At the protest last semester, I heard a lot of students talking about how we needed to keep up the same energy that we all felt that day. These resources are a great way to start.

Denim day is important, and more awareness to an ever-growing problem is never a bad thing.

Unfortunately, after this past year, everyone at CSB/SJU is well aware that rape culture alive and well and needs to do a bit more than pull on a pair of jeans to stop September 2021 from ever happening again.