Students and staff shares stories to raise awareness
Alex Kendall
-Art & Life Editor-
A bell chimes. A woman screams. “Dear stranger, I screamed and you did not listen. You hurt me and you like it. Your face haunts my dreams,” one shirt hung from a clothesline in the STLCC-Meramec Quad reads.
Shirts are adorned with the stories of violence and abuse. “I was only four years old,” another says.
These shirts are part of the Clothesline Project, an organization established to promote the awareness and support of women who have been raped, beaten, killed and abused.
“[The Clothesline Project] is here to raise awareness of violence against women and to give them a voice or allow them to express their emotion, let out some anger, just witness what’s happened to them,” said Tracy Lampkins Meramec academic advisor and Women’s History Committee member.
Originally started in October of 1990 in Hyannis, Massachusetts, the Clothesline Project, now in 41 states and 5 countries, was held at Meramec for the first time three years ago.
“It is a national project and we just found out about it a few years ago and brought it here,” associate professor of communications Denise Speruzza associate professor of communications and chair of the Meramec Women’s History Committee said. “We get so much feedback from people-some who decorated shirts-who are just so thankful that they have the opportunity.”
Sponsored by the Women’s History Committee, The Clothesline Project allows students both women and men to create a t-shirt for those who have been victims of violence and abuse, themselves or someone they know.
“It’s a visual display and the t-shirts are created by women or men who are victims of violence or abuse. The different colored shirts represent a different kind of abuse or violence,” Lampkins said. “And so they can draw or write on a t-shirt depending on which kind of violence they’ve experienced and then we hang it on the line. It’s kind of a visual representation of what women are experiencing.”
The Clothesline Project is part of Voices Against Violence, a weeklong event that intends to raise awareness and inform students and faculty about various aspects of violence and abuse in the community.
“Most important is awareness, just that students become more aware that violence is an issue,” Sperruzza said. “We’ve encouraged faculty members to bring their class and maybe incorporate it into classroom discussions.”
As part of Voices Against Violence week, Meramec will host Take Back the Night, an event that first took place after the 1975 murder of Susan Alexander Speeth. The event promotes that no woman should be afraid to walk at night and to remember those who have been killed.
“We’re going to shuttle [the women] to downtown Kirkwood to have a rally and a speech there. And then walk back to campus together as a group to show the fact that women, safely, cannot be out by themselves at night,” Sperruzza said.
Both men and women can attend the event.
The event will begin at 5:45 p.m., with the women meeting to shuttle to Kirkwood Station for a rally and speech and the men in Business and Administration 105 for an interactive lecture. The Clothesline Project will continue through Thursday, March 29.
