Students organize in Slut Walk

Students+organize+in+Slut+Walk

Lauren Schnepf, Assistant News Editor

Students carrying signs congregated around the Waterman green for the Womyn of Color Coalition “Slut Walk” Oct 22.

The students walked from the Waterman building to Harris Millis while yelling chants like, “Yes means fuck me, no means fuck you.”

The Slut Walk promotes body and sex positivity and brings awareness to issues of sexual injustice, according to the event’s UVM Bored page.

“No more sexual violence, no more victim blaming, no more derogatory labels, and no more gender inequality,” the page stated.

About 11,000 college campuses provide annual crime data with an overwhelming majority of schools certifying that in 2015 they did not receive a single report of rape, senior Angelica Crespo said in a speech to the crowd.

The Slut Walk was founded at a college in Toronto, Canada when a police officer told a group protesting sexual violence that if they did not dress up as sluts, maybe they would not get raped, sophomore RiRi Stuart-Thompson said.

“With sexual violence permeating our college campus- es and victim-blaming at a disgusting high, it’s time to put the power back in our hands,” she said.

UVM students have also been raising awareness around sexual violence through the “Me Too” movement.

Following accusations against film producer Harvey Weinstein, people across the U.S. have been posting “Me Too” on their Facebook and Twitter accounts to raise awareness of sexual harassment and assault.

Students Advocating Sexual Empowerment posted a banner with the words “Me Too” outside of Living Well in the Davis Center. Students wrote about their experiences with sexual harassment and assault, according to an Oct. 17 Facebook post by senior Z McCarron.

“This isn’t about showing perpetrators and disbelievers how large this issue is,” McCarron stated, “rather this is about showing survivors and victims they are not alone.”

Sophomore Tali Friedman said the issue of sexual violence should not need to be published online to be taken seriously.

“It angers me that it takes such a massive social media movement to draw attention to such an important and poignant issue,” she said.

Friedman said the problem with this movement is that it doesn’t emphasize enough the fact that men and trans people can be and are victims of sexual harassment and assault, too