Strength and Courage: SU's Take Back the Night Event
- Anna Belong
- 3 days ago
- 2 min read
Salisbury University’s Take Back the Night event, hosted by SU’s Counseling Center, took place last night not just in the Wicomico Room of Guerrieri Student Union, but all over campus.
Because part of the event was a solidarity march and a sexual-violence awareness rally, both students and faculty members from different domains on campus took to the streets to emphasize consent, support for victims, and an aversion to rape culture on the whole.
Students, faculty, and audience members alike took to the stage after the march – discussing what it means to take back the night, to come forward as a victim and survivor of sexual assault, and to unite as a collective to enact change in a society where sexual abuse is normalized and common.
“[We are] talking about changing the narrative…victim blaming has become a national pastime,” sociology professor and director of Safe Spaces Training Program Diane Illig described. “It’s time to take back the night – in the sense that we need to lift the shrouds and claim our voices, and our places in the world. It is about the power of our stories, told openly, to change the way people think about, and respond to sexual assault and interpersonal violence.”
Multiple student organizations and campus resources were tabling in order to make their services and presence as tool in everyday campus life – SU’s Safe Ride, Project KISS, Office of Diversity and Inclusion, and more stepped up again to discuss the work they do with the university and how it tackles some of the intersections of violence discussed during the event.
As part of the organization hosting the event, SU counselor Dawn Keter spoke about how the university can help with short term counseling, aid in connecting students with community providers, and take preventative measures through outreach and events.
“The counseling center, we offer a short term in person counseling for students, and if students feel like longer term therapy would really be beneficial for them then we can work with them until we get them connected to a community provider. An option that students have too, TimelyCare [is] a national organization that we contract with, and they offer a couple different options for services…we can also connect students to nurse practitioners and psychiatric practitioners,” said Keter when detailing some of the options for mental health care available to SU students.
“And then we do a lot of outreach events… we realize that students don’t get to see our faces very often, so we try to do these outreach events to make students aware that [the center] exists, what our services are, and that they can utilize them.”
Out of the Darkness is a suicide prevention event that the counseling center will also be hosting later this month, from 11am-12pm on the 25th of April.
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