Gracious, meaningful, and cinematic would describe this year’s Take Back the Night event. Wednesday, September 13th, UI had their annual sexual assault awareness event called Take Back the Night.
This event is a part of the Katy Benoit Campus Safety month. Benoit was a graduate student here at UI for psychology back in 2011. After breaking intimate relations with a professor, he stalked and murdered Benoit and then proceeded to take his own life. Since then, UI has taken the month of September to keep Benoit’s story alive and known to all students on campus.
Take Back the Night isn’t just here at UI. It is an internationally known event that originated in 1976 as a sexual assault protest with a candlelight procession. The event at UI is hosted by the campus’s Women’s Center. The event started with an information panel. There were speeches on the importance of the event, resources on the campus, and anonymous stories on sexual assault.
For an hour, hundreds of people walked up through campus with candles in their hands. Starting the walk at the Agriculture Science building, then pass the ISUB Plaza, and up to Admin. Throughout the walk a whistle was blown every 68 seconds to represent someone being sexually assaulted. The highlight of the night was walking past Katy Benoit’s bench. The scene was flooded with flowers, candles and the sisterhood of Alpha Gamma Delta singing in Katy’s honor.
The bench was just the start. Walking down Greek row members of Greek life stood all down the street with posters and candles in honor of the event. The final steps of the night were through the dorms, finishing back where they started at the Agriculture Science building.
Avery Tabb, one of the volunteers helping with the event said, “I really think it’s important to just show awareness The statistics of how unfortunately often sexual violence happens on campus’s, you know hearing firsthand the survivors’ stories and understanding that it is something real and tangible.”
The surprising factor of the night was the vast number of men rather than women at the event.
“Almost two-thirds of the people there were all men. The Fraternity Council actually approached us and said they really wanted to encourage men on the campus to step up and be involved,” Tabb said.
Talking to students, some really enjoyed participating. An anonymous student expressed their experience by saying, “When we did the presentation and when we saw the bench, I felt a little sad, but I also felt really connected to all the people walking with us.”
The night was beautiful and memorable for all students who participated Everyone was there to walk and support anyone who is a survivor of sexual assault. It was an event that not only represented sexual assault awareness, but also the involvement of students in their community. This was one of the many events to come. The rest of September has more events just like this to come in honor of Benoit and the awareness of sexual assault on campus.
Sophia Newell can be reached at [email protected]