National “Get Carded” Day, an all-day public awareness event on sexual assault, took place Thursday. Mississippi State University was the only university in the state to participate in the program.
About 50 volunteers, including faculty, staff and students, set up tables at the Drill Field, Colvard Student Union and Sanderson Center to hand out cards containing information on how to prevent sexual assault.
About 5,000 cards containing information on sexual assault were distributed by noon, Sexual Assault Services coordinator Leigh Jensen said.
Bill Kibler, vice president of student affairs, said the goal of this project was to raise awareness of sexual assault, primarily targeting women.
“This program will hopefully make students aware of situations that increase risks of being sexually assaulted,” said Myra Fitts, a nurse practitioner at the Longest Student Health Center.
Fitts, counsels women who have been sexually assaulted, said that sexual assault occurs quite frequently.
“Often when someone has been sexually assaulted, the attacker was someone the victim knew or even thought was a friend, and alcohol was usually involved,” Fitts added.
Jensen said that there are many victims of sexual assault, but few report it. She also said that she sees 15 to 30 women each semester who are victims of sexual assault.
Mississippi State has been working against sexual assault through Sexual Assault Services, as well as the Sexual Assault Response Team (SART), which responds when there is an assault reported. MSU was the first university in the state to have a sexual assault program, Jensen said.
According to sexual assault statistics from MSU Sexual Assault Services, only 22 percent of victims were assaulted by someone they had never seen before or did not know, and one out of every eight adult women has been the victim of forcible rape.
Also based on these statistics, physical assault is as prevalent among high school and college couples as married couples, and one in four high school and college students when surveyed said that they had experienced violence in a dating relationship.
“I feel that this project was a success if the students were curious and read the cards and learned anything about sexual assault from them,” Jensen said.