Students Stopping Rape

Rally & Ishle Yi Park

IT AFFECTS ME RALLY
Thursday, April 12 10am-2pm
@ the Building 434 lawn
– Various student groups, such as STAR and Mujer, will be tabling at our rally!
– Performances by WETT, Local Motion, and Naked Voices!
– Keynote Speaker: Professor Grace Chang

The rally is a peaceful gathering at the Building 434 lawn (the old Women’s Center lawn) of students, faculty, and staff. Interactive games and art installations, along with tabling of various student groups, enhance the performances and the speaker. Come by at any time and check out our educational materials and information! Everyone is welcome!

ISHLE YI PARK, performing LUMINOUS: A NIGHT OF SPOKEN WORD AND ACOUSTIC SOUL
Thursday, April 12 7pm
@ the MCC theater
– Ishle Yi Park, noted speaker, poet, artist, and poet, will be performing her multimedia one-woman show entitled “Luminous: A Night of Spoken Word and Acoustic Soul.” The event is free. Everyone is welcome!

It Affects Me: Week of Events

This week-long event is also hosted along with a variety of other student groups on campus, as well as coincides with other awareness and educational campaigns held during the month of April. Movies, discussions, performances, and more are held during this time to increase sexual assault awareness. The week culminates with our It Affects Me rally. Information, resources, and tools about rape and sexual assault are available all week.

Monday, April 9, 2007
10am-2pm: Tabling with free t-shirts at the Arbor (with Santa Barbara Mayor Marty Blum from 12pm-1pm)
6:30pm: Street Harassment Workshop at the San Nicolas Residence Hall formal lounge
8pm: Street Harassment Workshop at the De Anza Resource Center @ Manzanita Village

Tuesday, April 10, 2007
10am-2pm: Tabling with free t-shirts at the Arbor (with Vice Chancellor Michael Young from 12pm-1pm)
7pm: Pop Culture and Sexual Assault Trivia Game at Francisco Torres’s Linda Vista Room

Wednesday, April 11, 2007
10am-2pm: Tabling with free t-shirts and the Clothesline Project at the Arbor
6pm: Guess the Rapist at Santa Rosa Residence Hall

Thursday, April 12, 2007
10am-2pm: It Affects Me Rally with keynote: Grace Chang at the Building 434 lawn
7pm: Luminous: A Night of Spoke Word and Acoustic Soul with Ishle at the Multi Cultural Center Theater

Friday, April 13, 2007
10am-2pm: Tabling with free t-shirts at the Arbor

View the campus map. If you have any questions about directions, locations, times, etc. please e-mail: RPEPpeers@sa.ucsb.edu.

Next Meeting: April 5

After spring break, SSR will meet for the first week of Spring quarter to reunite and get ready for the big awareness and visual campaign, It Affects Me, from April 9 to April 13!

What is IT AFFECTS ME? It Affects Me (IAM) is a campaign that Students Stopping Rape holds during a week of April, National Sexual Assault Awareness Month, to educate, inform, and enlighten the UCSB and surrounding areas about sexual violence, sexual harassment, and rape in our community.

Why do you hold the It Affects Me campaign? Rape and sexual assault is a problem intertwined with the system of rape culture present in our society today.

To end rape means to look within ourselves as individuals and live consciously - which means being aware of the language that we use, the prejudices we hold, and the beliefs that the media and popular culture instill in us.

The objectification of women, standards of masculinity, stereotypes of race and gender, and sexist language all make it harder for us to believe women when they have been raped and to blame the rapist rather than the survivor. To end rape does not involve telling people to just not rape, it means educating our peers about rape culture, the way language, beliefs, and behaviors allow it to happen, and informing them on how to be more supportive of everyone, women AND men.

One in four women in college will experience a rape or an attempted rape experience. Chances are, someone you know has been affected by rape and you may not realize it. Being more sensitive is the first step to alleviating the epidemic of rape in our community.

How can I participate in It Affects Me? We also pass out royal blue t-shirts emblazoned with “IT AFFECTS ME” on them. Since this is a visibility campaign, we pass out free t-shirts to the UCSB community with information about sexual violence and assault so that when asked, “What affects you?” they can start a dialogue and discuss these issues. One of our goals is to get all people in our community talking about this problem.

IAM involves educational, informative, and enjoyable events all week long! Check out the calendar (TBA) and come to as many as you want! We also welcome new members and are looking for interns for next year, so come to a meeting. We meet Wednesdays at 5pm.

IAM Preparations at the first meeting!

The first meeting of this quarter will take place on Wednesday, January 10 at 5pm in the Women’s Center on campus. Now that Fall quarter training is done, we will finally be “jumping into the water” with It Affects Me planning! Committees will be formed for the campaign — such as Fundraising, Publicity, Events, etc. — and anyone who has an idea for their own committee is welcome to share it. See you soon! Please email RPEPpeers@sa.ucsb.ed with any questions.

Know the Evils of Sexual Assault

by Katie Mahon
[ View original Daily Nexus article ]

By now you have seen the hundreds of blue shirts lining the bike paths. By now you have been to a workshop, listened to a speaker or “guessed the rapist.” By now you have talked to a peer educator about sexual violence. By now you have worn and you understand your own blue shirt. Unless you have been living under a rock for the past week, by now you realize that you are affected by rape, sexual violence and rape culture.

You realize that one in four women will be the victim of rape or attempted rape by the time that she graduates from college and you realize that men are also survivors of sexual violence. As a man you realize that a woman might be afraid of you because she cannot tell the difference between a man who is safe and a man who is dangerous. You realize that you live in a society in which sexism is celebrated on MTV. You realize that you live in a culture where rape is allowed to happen.

So, now what do you do? What part can you play in ending sexual violence?

Start small. Think about the language that you use. The next time that you hear a friend call someone a slut, ho, skank or whore, recognize that these words punish women who engage in consensual sex and contribute to an overall culture of sexism. Ask her to choose a new word. The next time that you hear a communication professor use the word pussy, recognize that he is comparing something that he sees as weak to a woman and is perpetuating the belief that women are weaker than men. Call him on it. The next time that you hear someone make a joke about rape, ask him to think deeply about what exactly he is laughing at. Make these changes in your own vocabulary as well.

Think about how rape survivors are treated. If someone tells you that she has been sexually assaulted, always believe and never blame her. Give her the opportunity to tell her story, but never ask questions like, “What were you drinking?” or “What were you doing in his room?” because questions like these blame survivors for actions committed against them. Give her support, but never tell her what to do.

Talk to people about sexual violence. Talk about sexual violence in general. The problem of sexual assault is never going to be solved if people do not talk openly about it.

Go bigger. Educate yourself and others about the definitions of sexual assault and consent. Recognize the myths that surround sexual violence. Write letters to the editor of your newspaper when you see injustice and inequality in your community. Turn off MTV. Read books and articles about violence against women, recommend them to friends and loved ones - my favorites include I Never Called it Rape, by Robin Warshaw and Fraternity Gang Rape: Sex, Brotherhood, and Privilege on Campus, by Peggy Sanday. Stop “rating” and yelling at women outside Sam’s To Go and from your DP balconies. Call Mark Batalla on the sexist cartoons that he draws and allows in the Nexus. Take a Women’s Studies class, hell, take several Women’s Studies classes. Vote for politicians who include ending violence against women in their platforms and hold these politicians accountable to their promises. Imagine new ways to end sexual violence and share these ideas with others.

Recognize the interconnections of oppressions. Know that, as Audre Lorde says, we cannot afford the luxury of fighting one form of oppression only. Understand that ending sexual violence means ending sexism, racism, heterosexism, ablism, agism and all of the other inequalities that exist in our world.

Realize that there are people who want to work with you on this issue. Join Students Stopping Rape, Men Against Rape, Take Back the Night, WETT, or one of the other groups on campus that work to eradicate sexual violence. Call the Women’s Center at 893-3778 for more information.

Understand that “yes” means “yes” and everything else means “no.” If you are unsure, ask. If you are still unsure, stop.

Katie Mahon is a junior communication and sociology major and a co-coordinator for Students Stopping Rape.

Post-”It Affects Me”

First of all great work on It Affects Me. I think I speak for everyone when I say it was a great success! Congratulations and thanks to everyone who helped out with the tabling, handing out shirts, attending events, making goodie bags, setting up and so much more!

We are meeting this week, at 5pm at the Women’s Center. We are going to have a de-briefing session where Sharon will come and talk to us about IAM and where we go from here. It will probably be a shorter meeting, only till about 6, so you can all plan for that.

Once again thanks to everyone and great job on IAM this year! — Katherine