Why Take Back the Night?

It is an almost rite-of-passage for Harvard students to take part in the hurried and frantic postering of the Yard and Science Center early Monday and Thursday mornings. We notoriously politically active, busy bee Harvard students are never short of events, causes, or discussions to plan, prepare, and publicize. So when we set about doing just that for Take Back the Night 2005, a week to raise awareness about sexual and domestic violence on campus and in the greater community, we were presented with the same obstacles any student group sponsoring an event faces—how to get people to care, how to get people involved in planning and publicity, and how to get people to attend the events.

But in our minds, there was something different about Take Back the Night than other events or groups. This is not to deny the legitimacy, power, or gravity of the many worthwhile causes to which Harvard students selflessly devote themselves. Students working on Darfur, Unite Against AIDS, t sunami relief, and others undoubtedly deserve our support and attention. But when reached out to student groups and our peers to ask them to cosponsor, publicize, or attend our events, they wanted to know, why Take Back the Night? Why not the many other causes that present themselves to us?

The answer lies in the reality that every year, Harvard students are directly, personally affected by sexual assault. The National College Women Sexual Victimization Study (2000) estimated that between 1 in 4 and 1 in 5 college women experience completed or attempted rape during their college years and that between 80 to 90 percent of all survivors know their attackers. So then why don’t we hear their voices or see their faces? Sexual violence is vastly underreported; the same study indicated that over 84 percent of survivors do not report their attacks to the police. The stark reality is that statistically this is a cause that impacts someone you know.

What are we saying to survivors—friends, siblings, parents, roommates, loved ones—when we say and do nothing at all? We are saying that we are not prepared to create the truly supportive environment that would allow them to come forward. Victim-blaming is frighteningly prevalent—why didn’t you say “no” more clearly? Why didn’t you push back? Why did you have anything to drink? When someone is robbed, or is the victim of another violent crime, our first thoughts are not, “Are they for real?” How is it that only for the most prevalent, violent crime—sexual violence—that we create these undue burdens for survivors to prove that their accusation is legitimate, or that they were not at fault for their assault? A community that is silent, and that does not take a stand to support survivors, is one that allows these incredible emotional, legal, and societal obstacles to silence survivors’ voices.

What is equally disturbing is what a silent or inactive community says to its perpetrators. If no one were to speak up, attend a vigil, go to an event about rape myths, or any other educative or informative event, would we know what the appropriate boundaries of our actions are? Would we know how to communicate, or how to intervene to potentially prevent sexual violence? Would we know how to support survivors? Would perpetrators understand that their behavior and actions are hurtful, and that their community will not tolerate them? Probably not. We can all participate in and benefit from gaining the skill and knowledge of how to change a culture that tacitly condones sexual violence. It isn’t intuitive, and it isn’t straightforward. But it is vitally important.

So what should the Harvard community be saying or doing? Our goal for Take Back the Night is not to foster anger, but rather to foster understanding and to build a network that is supportive of survivors and activists. So if you can find the time, ask yourself what it would mean to survivors to go for a few hours to give an audience to those who will be coming to share their experiences. Ask yourself what it would mean to attend a vigil, an all-male event about common unasked and unanswered questions about sexual violence, a discussion on violence in the BGLTQ community, or a benefit concert that will donate funds to the Boston Area Rape Crisis Center and Transition House. We think that it would say a lot. We spend 51 weeks of the year in a culture that silences survivors and shies away from confronting sexual violence. Take Ba ck the Night is one week where we hope that members of the community will make the statement that sexual violence is not something that they will tolerate, and that they are ready and willing to face the issue so. Then we can begin to change that culture so that the awareness of sexual violence is all the time—not just for this one week.

Leah M. Litman ’06 is a chemistry concentrator in Eliot House. She is the co-chair of Harvard Take Back the Night.