Nearly 40 attendees gathered to walk from the West Campus bus loop to East Campus on Friday as part of Duke Sexual Harassment & Assault Prevention & Education’s Reclaim the Night event, the culmination of a weeklong series honoring Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
Attendees celebrated Duke’s history and ongoing progress in sexual assault activism and stood in solidarity with sexual assault survivors, calling for the University to further invest in sexual assault prevention programs.
During the event, SHAPE demanded that the University conduct another student experience survey to collect data on sexual violence, continue sexual assault prevention training throughout students’ time at Duke and provide a physical space for the Center for Gender Violence Prevention & Intervention.
“We did this walk last year, in part as a tribute to those who walked before us, but also in part of solidarity for survivors, as a moment of action — a moment of mobilization for our demands and what we're asking for the institution in terms of how to make campus safe,” said Jiewei Li, a senior and SHAPE’s director of outreach.
SHAPE members also held a 48-second-long moment of silence to honor the 48% of undergraduate women who reported experiencing sexual assault during their time at Duke in a 2018 student experience poll.
One of SHAPE’s primary demands is for an updated student experience survey on sexual violence on Duke’s undergraduate campus. In a 2023 guest column to The Chronicle, SHAPE called it “imperative that this data is collected urgently, as it is difficult to make and measure change without statistics.”
SHAPE demanded the University continue assault prevention education and training throughout the undergraduate experience.
Li called the fact that mandatory sexual assault prevention training ends after first-year orientation “unacceptable” and believes a mandatory curriculum across all four years would benefit students in the long term.
SHAPE’s third demand was for Duke to provide a physical office for the Center for Gender Violence Prevention and Intervention, as employed faculty and staff do not have an on-campus location to operate from.
The event also highlighted the progress made each year by survivors and the University. Past SHAPE demands that have been met include the hiring of a permanent GVPI director and an updated sexual assault prevention training during first-year orientation.
The Coalition for a Women’s Center hosted Duke’s first Reclaim the Night to support women’s rights and empower them to walk unescorted around campus at nighttime. According to Director of SHAPE Ben Sperber, a senior, this year’s walk was also inspired by the 2006 Reclaim the Night event “to share stories and experiences of sexual violence and healing.”
Both Sperber and Li reiterated that sexual assault is not solely a women’s issue, nor is it a finished one.
“Sexual violence prevention isn't just April … This is an active effort that we all have to be a part of,” Li said. “It's not enough just just to not be a perpetrator. You have to take an active stance against sexual violence and actively prevent it, and that's not something we do for one month of the year.”
Get The Chronicle straight to your inbox
Signup for our weekly newsletter. Cancel at any time.
Claire Cranford is a Trinity first-year and features managing editor for the news department.