Students Take Back the Night

Students++Take++Back+the++Night

Across the Dickinson campus on Wednesday, April 16, a group of students chanted, “Claim our bodies, claim our right. Take a stand, take back the night.” These words embodied the essence of the college’s annual Take Back the Night event.

Take Back the Night is a national event to raise awareness of domestic and relationship violence. The event began at 7 pm in Allison Social Hall with speeches by a keynote speaker and members of the college community, and was followed by a march across campus. The event was sponsored by a number of Dickinson departments and student organizations, as well as the Domestic Violence Services of Cumberland and Perry Counties and the YWCA of Carlisle.

The keynote speaker was Leslie Morgan Steiner, author of Crazy Love, a memoir about surviving domestic violence. Steiner has a made a career out of telling her story of abuse. During her speech, she recounted to the audience the details of her abusive relationship with her first husband, who beat her for the first time five days before their wedding.

Steiner also described herself as a typical victim who was able to get out of the abusive relationship and learn from the situation.

“The real reason I didn’t leave was because I wanted violence to end, but not the relationship,” Steiner said, speaking to a common problem that faces victims of domestic abuse.

Now remarried with three kids, Steiner said she has dedicated her career to encouraging victims to come forward with stories of their abuse and break the silence.

“Abuse survives and thrives when we don’t talk about it,” Steiner said in her speech.

The event also included speeches by Dee Danser, assistant vice president of Public Safety; Joyce Bylander, vice president of Student Development; Emily Gleason ’14; Kevin Yoo ’15; and Hope Kildea ’14.

Danser, who described domestic violence prevention work as her passion, asked the audience, “Why do we so often base ourselves on what other people think of us?”

Bylander urged the audience to bring back peace and love to the Dickinson Campus and to the world.

“If we don’t, we won’t create the world we want to live in,” she said.

Gleason, president of Yes Please!, told the audience the story of her mother’s sexual assault. Gleason said that the story changed her, and hoped that it would affect those who heard it. She ended her speech by asking the audience if Dickinson would be safe for its incoming students.

Martin Zahariev ’17 was one of the many students and faculty to attend the event and participate in the march. Zahariev said that while it was hard to listen to the stories of abuse, “the event was interesting and informative”

Before the throng of chanters began to march through campus, Michele St. Julien ’14, a spoken word artist and a member of eXiled, performed. Her performance also told the story of a girl who spoke up about her abuse in order to save herself.

The poem included phrases such as, “Love should never be explained as possession,” and “mistakes didn’t make me undeservable.”

St. Julien ended her poem and the event with the words, “I will never be silenced for you.”

For more information about Yes Please! or Take Back the Night, contact Dorothy Andrews, violence prevention coordinator, at [email protected].