The event was not a protest of security at the three college campuses in that neighborhood, and, despite the obvious camaraderie, it was more than just a big group hug.
“It’s really for all the people who aren’t here. Victims of sexual violence who are afraid or embarrassed to speak out about it,” organizer Caitlin Hoag said. “We want them to know we’re in this together and it’s OK to talk about it. Because I, my friends and everybody I know has a story.”
Ms. Hoag said that as a child she thought all interpersonal relationships were as strained as they seemed in small, conservative Douglassville, Berks County.
“I felt like this must be how it is, how people treat people,” she said. “Then I came to college and realized that it is not how people treat people.”
But Ms. Hoag and her friends found few victims’ advocates in university life, and started talking about it on campus.
“I raised a ruckus,” she said.
Carlow University heard her, and Ms. Hoag was recruited as a peer educator pushing for better university policies on responding to aggression and victim counseling. A grant from the U.S. Department of Justice funded Project SAFE, a Carlow initiative to enhance prevention of and responses to domestic and sexual violence. The program corresponds to requirements of the Title IX federal amendment against sex discrimination in education.
Ms. Hoag organized the march through Project SAFE with support from Carlow, University of Pittsburgh and Carnegie Mellon University, as well as several community organizations. The event sought to draw attention to National Sexual Assault Awareness Month.
The marchers, mostly young adults, assembled for sign making at Carlow, walked the sidewalks of Fifth and Forbes avenues and Bigelow Boulevard, and rallied on the CMU campus. On a podium under a double-wide sun tent, sexual assault survivors shared lingering emotional scars.
Esme Stasa, a Pitt student, spoke about growing up in an abusive household.
“I remember going to my friend’s house for a sleepover at 14 and hearing her parents arguing and I had a panic attack,” she said. “My friend asked me what’s wrong. I said he’s going to come in and beat us, and she said no. I realized my home wasn’t like other homes.”
Ms. Stasa said her guidance counselor recognized signs of child abuse and intervened. But the family pattern often carries through to later relationships, she said, and she’s still learning to work through her trauma.
“You statistically are to repeat the cycle,” she said. “Now I volunteer at women’s shelters, giving them someone to talk with, because you don’t want your daughter or son to treat someone else the way you were treated. It starts with you breaking that cycle.”
Ms. Stasa and friends Wythe Chen and Katie Gallo run Underdog, an advocate group for victims of sexual violence.
“You see these young women at 17 or 18 finally leaving home. How are they going to know what a normal home is like when they’ve never seen it in their homes?” Ms. Stasa said. “Our goal in Underdog is to give them an overview of what healthy boundaries look like, what a loving relationship looks like.”
Events like Sunday’s march are valuable and appreciated in the Oakland community, Ms. Hoag said.
“People seeing us and hearing us coming down Fifth and Forbes today made an impact,” she said. “People were honking their horns. That’s telling survivors they’re not alone.”
Oakland is “pretty safe,” Ms. Hoag said, and she believes that the universities are trying to improve their awareness of sexual assault on and off campus.
“I can’t speak for the students of Pitt and CMU, but I think that Carlow has increased [its] response to this issue tremendously by getting us Project SAFE,” she said. “They’ve really done a lot of work on our response process and are trying not to retraumatize and re-victimize students who have been victims of harm. But I think we can do better. We can always do better for our students.”
