Why We Need 'Take Back The Night'

Planning Take Back the Night (TBTN), an entire week of events to promote awareness and action against violence against women and other women's issues, has been an energy-demanding and time-consuming effort for everyone on the TBTN committee. Throughout the past week, as we have urged our Harvard-Radcliffe peers to attend the events that we worked laboriously to organize, we are only sometimes successful in convincing them to attend, but we are frequently met with their encouragement and support.

However, this encouragement often seems superficial. As we watch scores of women and even some of our friends pass by our posters without even a glance, we sense their skepticism about our decision to devote so much time and energy to these crunchy, outdated feminist causes. Many students at Harvard-Radcliffe seem to believe that the women's liberation movement has run its course and that the struggles of women are no longer relevant to their lives. Sometimes, after lengthy budget negotiations, scrambles for room assignments and 8 a.m. poster runs, we even wonder the same thing. There are moments when we, too, ask the question: why, now that women are athletes, science concentrators, presidents of student societies and date initiators, do we still need Take Back the Night?

And then we remind ourselves, revitalize our socially active urges and attempt to explain it to others.

Taking back the night explicitly means making the night a safe place for women. If the nights were safe, women could go out by themselves to party, work night-shifts, take brain-clearing walks, return from the library, explore cities, contemplate nature and leave situations in which we feel threatened or uncomfortable, without feeling we are taking dangerous risks. This isn't the case, and thus we are dependent and restrained. Although Harvard-Radcliffe students have started to take back the night with groups such as SafetyWalk, the Coalition Against Sexual Violence and other endeavors, clearly there is much more that needs to be reclaimed. This is why the TBTN committee, consisting of female and male representatives from over 30 student groups, organized Take Back the Night.

Take Back the Night has been associated with violence against women internationally for nearly 30 years. Sexual, physical and emotional violence against women are major foci of this week at Harvard-Radcliffe. However, since this is the only campus-wide and established women's week at the College, we decided to include events that approach the quest for safety on different levels: safety within the community, within interpersonal relationships and within the self. Safety is a crucial concern for most women on campus, and we have attempted to address this concern by providing education for the greater campus community and promoting awareness of the depth and pervasiveness of women's struggles, by actively implementing preventative measures and by providing emotional support for women and empowering ourselves.

Women are members of multiple communities over their lifetimes. As members of the Harvard-Radcliffe community, we need to feel safe and equal on the streets at night, in our classrooms and in our professional endeavors. Women still face severe discrimination in hiring and pay in the workplace. The TBTN programming which addresses these concerns includes discussions of struggles of women in the church, at the Western Wall, in scientific academia and as artists and as prostitutes; a self-defense workshop; and a river run to take back the river path where numerous women have been attacked and raped.

Tonight's rally and march affirms women's comfort in the community and also addresses safety on the level of interpersonal relationship. Women need to feel safe both physically and psychologically with their friends and partners. Rape happens at Harvard. Therefore our programming necessarily addresses both women and men: TBTN is hosting a male athletes' forum to discuss violence against women, a discussion with a speaker from a battered women's shelter, panels on domestic violence amongst various ethnic communities on campus and beyond and a demonstration and discussion about Harvard's date rape policies.

In order for women to feel strong enough to use our voices and to participate fully in interpersonal relationships and the community, we need to feel safe within ourselves. Programming such as the dance therapy workshop, women--only discussion group and the eat-in--where women eat shamelessly in an attempt to gain acceptance of and to celebrate our bodies--all help to empower women. TBTN also celebrates women's creativity and accomplishments with a women's performance evening, art show and poetry reading.

In moments of doubt about our feminist endeavors, and as a response to those who impugn them, we recall that women face multiple impediments to safety. These issues need to be addressed by women as a group and the community-at-large. With our mouths full of ice cream, we must continue to yell for change--and hope that more students will do the same.

Judith Batalion '00 is a history and science concentrator in Adams House. Talya M. Weisbard is a social anthropology concentrator in Eliot House. They are co-chairs of this year's Take Back the Night committee.