Clothesline Project raises awareness

    The Clothesline Project, put on by the Women’s Resource Center, hung T-shirts made by victims or friends of victims of domestic violence Monday on Front Campus.
     The purpose of the project is to enable victims to express their pain and anger and to inform students about domestic violence against women.
    Jennifer Graham Stephens, the coordinator of the Women’s Resource Center, said this is a visual awareness project about different forms of violence against women. 
    She has been helping with the Clothesline Project for the past five years.  Stephens said the Women’s Resource Center was born out of this project.
    “We needed something on campus to help women deal with these things,” Stephens said.
    In addition to displaying T-shirts from all the previous years of the project, 24 new T-shirts were added this year. She said this was the biggest turnout in the project’s history.
    There is a color code for the T-shirts so viewers will know what type of violence the victim endured.  The colors represent death, rape or sexual assault, battery, incest or child sexual assault, abuse because of sexual orientation, emotional abuse, abuse because of disabilities or because of religious beliefs.
    Stephens said this is a community-wide event with a lot of news coverage, including that from The Union Recorder, The Baldwin Bulletin, The Macon Telegraph, 13 WMAZ and Fox 24. 
    “A lot of community leaders know by word of mouth that we do this every October,” Stephens said.
    October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, and the Clothesline Project is the Women’s Resource Center’s way of raising community awareness of violent crimes done against women.
    Stephens, a survivor of domestic violence, said she was sexually assaulted in high school.  The first person she talked to, an assistant principal, said it was her fault and that she was making a big deal out of nothing. 
    “I left her office completely shattered,” Stephens said. 
    She said that the situation left her feeling ashamed. 
    “I stopped wearing v-neck shirts entirely,” Stephens said.  “I stopped wearing skirts, or anything that could even remotely be inviting.”
    Stephens said that for the next few years she felt alone, like she was the only one who had such an experience.  She said when she became involved in the Clothesline Project, she realized that she was not alone, that other girls her age had been sexually assaulted.
    “It took coming here and hearing their experiences and telling them they did nothing wrong for me to realize that I did nothing wrong,” Stephens said. “It took years for me to realize that inside of myself.” 
    She said she made a T-shirt and it was a huge release for her. 
    Stephens said the T-shirts provide other women who have been abused with the courage to share their experiences.
    “It will prompt women to make a shirt if they see a sea of blue; they’ll think, ‘I’m not the only one who feels this way.  They’ll see other people who have experience the same thing,” Stephens said.  “Then, they can add their experienced so another woman will see it.”
    Chelsea Bruner, a senior creative writing major, said making a T-shirt helped her release the pain and frustration of being a victim of domestic violence as well.
    As a freshman living in Parkhurst Hall, Bruner joined Gay/Straight Alliance during Week of Welcome.  Her roommate could not handle living with a lesbian, and moved out after three days of living with Bruner.
    She said the thing that hurt her the most was that her roommate paid $2,000 to move out, because she would not wait for the two-week period to pass when she could move out for free.
    “I hadn’t done anything but be nice to her,” Bruner said.  “It was just awful to know that someone hated and feared something that much to pay that much money.” 
    Bruner said that someone even wrote on her door, “Die Fag.”
    “It was like not even feeling safe in the place you were supposed to live,” Bruner said. 
    Even now, Bruner has trouble realizing that she did nothing wrong.
    She said that she wished students would give people who are different from them a chance.  She also said that students who are being ostracized because of their differences should realize that it is not their fault.   
    “Give them a chance too,” Bruner said.  “They’re being faced with something they haven’t come across before.”
    Shana Marshall, a junior psychology and sociology major, said her sister made a T-shirt for her.  Marshall was molested by her step-father from  the age of 11 until she was 13. 
    Marshall said that exposing a story of abuse is hard, but rewarding..
    “Once you go through an experience and you do want to expose it, you wonder what people think,” Marshall said.  “Other people’s opinions are very strong.”
    She said that abuse is something that the victim can never forget.
    “You never forget, but he probably doesn’t remember,” said Marshall.

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Oct 20 2006. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry