Mississippi State University students will address the topic of sexual assault and violence when the National Clothesline Project comes to campus. The program is hosted on the Drill Field from today through Thursday.
Beatrice Tatem, director of Outreach and Sexual Assault Services, said the goal of the Clothesline Project is to bring awareness to the campus community and surrounding area about the occurrence and different kinds of sexual assault.
“Any time awareness is increased and people are educated, you also increase strength,” Tatem said. “Education is a tool, and that tool can be used to protect yourself.”
During the event, students are able to decorate a T-shirt with a message about sexual assault or violence and hang the shirt on a clothesline. Supplies and T-shirts are free, Tatem said.
Lewanda Swan, coordinator of OSAS, said students often have a wide range of emotions when putting up a shirt depending on where the student is in his or her healing process.
“For students to be able to freely give parts of themselves to the university to be put on display is astonishing,” she said. “Students are ready to have the conversation on sexualized violence.”
Tatem said the project also brings awareness to the issue of sexual assault and violence by putting it front and center on the Drill Field.
“(Hosting the Clothesline Project) speaks to the university’s efforts in trying to be proactive in presenting preventative educational programming and outreach,” she said.
Willie Sullivan, graduate assistant for the Holmes Cultural Diversity Center, has helped with the Clothesline Project since 2006 and said he thinks supporting the program does a good deed to those who have suffered from sexual assault.
“Sexual assault is real and does happen to our friends,” Sullivan said. “We need to support the Clothesline Project, because it supports our friends who didn’t have an ability to speak out. The whole project is about giving a voice to those who don’t have a voice and were affected by sexual assault.”
Each of the T-shirts are color-coded, indicating the type of abuse and whether or not the victim survived, Tatem said.
She said white shirts represent women and men who have died of violence.
Tatem said yellow/beige colored shirts stand for battered or assaulted women or men whose abuse may be verbal, physical, emotional or sexual. Oftentimes, these shirts carry a message about being harassed or slapped around.
Red/pink/orange shirts pay homage to survivors of rape or sexual abuse. For example, with one shirt a student expressed her feelings on having a child as a result of being raped. She wrote on the shirt: “I don’t like what you did to me, but I love my son.”
Blue/green shirts represent survivors of incest and sexual abuse. The messages on these shirts may refer to past abuse or a sexual assault that occurred off campus or at the student’s home with a relative, she said.
Purple/lavender shirts pay homage to women and men who were attacked because of their sexual orientations. People who are an ally to the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community may chose to do a shirt in the community’s honor, Tatem said.
Black shirts stand for women and men who were attacked for political or religious reasons. These shirts may include messages about those who have been attacked because of their religious practices or who are being detained and harmed by a government.
Swan said she has watched the Clothesline Project grow from barely 100 T-shirts to the current collection of over 700 T-shirts.
“It is our signature program,” Swan said. “We have many, but I think the Clothesline Project in and of itself is a self-sustaining project. It speaks for itself. No one has to tell you what this project is about. I dare students to show up and not be moved by what they see.”