Take Back the Night: Empowering Students to Feel Safe

Greek Week will end by raising awareness about sexual assault alongside UWG Health Center at Take Back the Night in the Campus Center Ballroom on April 10.  

At Take Back the Night students will be educated on what sexual assault is, how they can prevent it, how they can get through it and how to ask for consent. All students are welcomed as the Health Center wants to get their message out to as many people as possible.   

Take Back the Night will begin in the Campus Center Ballroom at 5:45 p.m. The event will start by having students make posters protesting sexual assault. Students will then be gathered together to listen to patient advocates, members from the counseling center, and university police on how their programs on campus can help survivors after an assault.  

“The purpose of Take Back the Night is to raise awareness about sexual assault, particularly because a lot of it happens at night,” said Mary Beth Thompson, Health Education Coordinator. “It is not always about stranger danger. It is about reclaiming being safe at night.”  

 Once all of the on-campus programs speak Dr. Angelic Muhammad will come on as the guest speaker. Muhammad is a survivor of sexual assault and will share her story on how she survived and how she continues to survive every day.  

 “She talks about how she survived an abusive relationship and sexual assault and how she went on to be able to be a mother,” said Thompson. “How she was able to overcome a lot of the trauma of that. She is a powerful speaker.”  

 Students will then be called into action to hold up their posters and flashlights and walk down to the Oaks Amphitheater. The purpose of the march is to help students feel safer together. Their posters and whistles will be held high in protest of sexual abuse.  

 “We want to take back the night. We want to feel safe at night,” said Thompson. “It’s about raising awareness about the different types of sexual assault that occur and the fact that sexual assault does occur… I want to empower people to prevent it and then to survive it.”   

 After everybody makes it to the Oaks Amphitheater they will gather around and listen to two student workers read a proclamation calling for an end to sexual assault not only on campus, globally as well.  

 “I hope that they [students] learn that sexual assault is real and does happen and I also hope that they learn if they survived it then they will keep surviving it and they will be okay one day,” said Thompson. “I hope that they learn how to not sexually assault others because sometimes I think people do not know what consent is and is not and I hope that they take that away from our program… They need to learn to respect consent when it is given or not.”