A quilt displayed outside the create[space], featuring the statistic that one in four people are sexually assaulted in their lifetime. The Center for Well-Being set it up for Sexual Assault Awareness Month to share stories and raise awareness. (Dom Tritchler/The Crest) 
The “What were you wearing?” exhibit on display in the create[space]. (Dom Tritchler/The Crest) 
A poster displaying the words “You are not alone” showed support to anyone who had experienced abuse in the create[space]. (Dom Tritchler/The Crest) 
A book collection and fliers related to Sexual Assault Awareness Month are on display in the O’Shaughnessy-Frey Library. (Dom Tritchler/The Crest)
For the past three years, the Center for Well-Being has put a display in the create[space] to showcase April being Sexual Assault Awareness Month. This year, a new quilt promises a fresh take on the annual exhibit.
Inside the create[space], posters highlighting survivor stories are on display, which allow students to show their support. Though some of the same aspects of the exhibit are returning, geology professor Lisa Lamb found inspiration from past displays to create a quilt for this year’s.
“I went over there a couple years ago; it was like half an hour before I was teaching a lab. I think I got two-thirds of the way through (reading the survivor stories), and I’m like, ‘Oh my God, I’m starting to bawl,’” Lamb said.
Lamb said she has a personal connection with the month because she knew someone in college who was assaulted. Additionally, she has made quilts for other issues such as redlining, which provided more inspiration for this new quilt. She said that her students also inspired her, though less directly.
“I heard the statistic that one in four women in college will be sexually assaulted, and then I started thinking: I’ve been at St. Thomas for so long, I used to teach big intro classes, I’ve done upper-division classes of different sizes, so I’ve probably taught 2,000 students,” Lamb said. “Say half are women, that’s a thousand, and a quarter of them have been assaulted; that’s 250 students, people I know.”
The statistic is shown on Lamb’s quilt. It is covered in circles, 25% of which are black rather than colorful to represent the impact that rape or sexual assault can have on a person’s life. Part of the quilt is specifically about St. Thomas. There is a depiction of the arches in the middle, and Lamb said that the background is purple to represent the women she knows who have probably had this experience.
Another interactive way for students to participate and show support is with their own quilt squares. The Center for Well-Being’s Sexual Assault Awareness Month kickoff event on April 2 invited students to design their own squares, and the opportunity will exist all throughout the month.
The squares are made from upcycled Homecoming T-shirts. Students can design a message for survivors which get printed through the create[space]’s specialty printers and melted onto fabric with sublimation machines.
“They can use those squares to make the next quilt, which is a labor of love and support with every stitch,” said Amanda Cashman, create[space] program manager.
Other events will take place throughout the month in addition to the create[space] display. Seth Quam, Center for Well-Being health promotion and violence prevention program manager, said an “In Their Footsteps” workshop on April 16 allowed students to step into the shoes of someone who experienced sexual violence and learn about resources on and off campus.
“The other big thing coming up April 30 is Denim Day, which is a worldwide day of protest against victim-blaming and that kind of thing. We encourage everybody to wear denim on that day,” Quam said.
The Center for Well-Being will be tabling in Dorsey Way to promote Denim Day and will be handing out denim bucket hats.
Along with the quilts and other events, students can learn why it is important to show support this month. Inside the create[space], they can walk around and see posters of survivor stories told with speech bubbles describing what happened to them.
“Some of those stories, which are the larger, full-size pieces of paper, are connected with clothes that match the description of what that person was wearing when they were assaulted,” Quam said.
One new aspect of the display is a poster with the premise, “What are green flags that you look for in a relationship?”
“It’s just kind of like, what’s healthy, what’s not healthy for a relationship,” said Priya Sanicharra, a junior and Center for Well-Being peer health educator.
Peer health educators helped make the poster, something Quam said focuses less exclusively on the harm and trauma people experience and more about how people can think of healthy versions of relationships and characteristics.
Students can write down their own answers to the question. A second version can be found in the library; the create[space] display was put away on April 17, so Quam encourages students to utilize the library poster. Quam said librarians also picked out book recommendations for people interested.
“Not a lot of people know it’s Sexual Assault Awareness Month,” Sanicharra said. “The hands-on, designing your own stuff is a good way to get students to participate.”
Another principal part of the display is its message. Several of the posters display the same message: “You are not alone.”
“I think that’s one of the great things about awareness month, is it helps people who maybe have felt alone; like they have this experience, they experienced this harm, violence, control taken away from them, and one of the ways that it can be really helpful to heal is to bring other people together — kind of stand in solidarity with each other,” Quam said.
Cashman said that the create[space] is proud to partner with the Center for Well-Being and everywhere else on campus.
“I think any effort that we do, such as something like this, helps really build that culture of consent and culture of support on our campus which is important for every student, especially for those who have had those experiences, to make sure that they’re not alone, so we’re happy to be part of that,” Cashman said.
Bridget Schmid can be reached at schm1520@stthomas.edu.
