It started out as four friends reacting to the October 2002 assault in a Wannamaker dormitory bathroom and has become a glossy 32-page account of sexual violence at the University.
The recently-published "Saturday Night: Untold Stories of Sexual Assault at Duke" aims--through first-person accounts of sexual assault, commentaries and columns--to raise awareness, provide resources and create a campus forum for discussing issues of sexual assault.
"We felt like we really had to do something," junior Lauren Williams said. Williams, a B.N. Duke Scholar along with juniors Allison Brim, Monica Lemmond and Ryan Kennedy, edited and produced the publication with the help of the Women's Center, Sexual Assault Support Services, the Sexual Harassment and Rape Prevention program and the B.N. Duke program.
Many of the reactions originally appeared as letters, columns and stories in The Chronicle. Others--primarily the first-person accounts of sexual assault--came from students reacting to the Wannamaker attack.
"We came up with the idea of soliciting the general public for stories, and we had some ideas of putting them into a play or something along those lines," Williams said. "But we eventually decided a publication would be the best way to display these stories. We felt so strongly about the need to share them with the Duke community."
The group plans on helping faculty members utilize the publication in their classrooms to eventually facilitate discussions around campus. "We see it as a starting point for creating more dialogue about the issue and hopefully getting people to the point where they're talking about it," Brim said.
Brim and Williams, along with other women who recently joined the duo to temporarily replace Lemmond and Kennedy--who are abroad--have already presented "Saturday Night" to sociology and women's studies classes. The group also hopes to reach out to other academic programs.
Although only in its first issue of publication, the editors remain hopeful that "Saturday Night" will continue to address sexual violence issues on campus in the future.
"We're hoping that this will be an annual publication and [that] we will be able to extend the perspectives represented in it," Williams said. "Currently we only have the stories of female survivors, and this can happen to males too."
More than anything, the editors and staff of "Saturday Night" hope that people will use the magazine as a starting point, no matter their own experiences with sexual assault, to reach out to others about the issue.
For some, sharing a story in the publication or simply reading about others' experiences may let them shed new, hopeful light on past trauma.
"I hope for some of them at least, this is going to be an aid in their healing process," Brim said. "I am hoping by sharing their stories they can move through the process of healing emotionally."
In the back of "Saturday Night" is a list of resources and helpful prompts for people who have been assaulted and their friends. Readers might be surprised, however, when they also see suggestions for people who think they may have committed sexual assault.
"We wanted to make it clear that some guys might read these stories and realize they have committed a sexual assault," Williams said. "Hopefully they can find help as well."
The staff behind "Saturday Night" is especially conscientious that sexual violence affects everyone at Duke.
"We look at this as a community problem," Williams said. "Everyone has to do something about it."
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