Sarah Carracher
News Editor
Project Unbreakable, a national project dedicated to increasing awareness of sexual assault and helping victims heal through art, has recently made its appearance on the Wooster campus.
Susan Lee, Special Assistant to the President for Diversity Affairs and Campus Climate, asked the student body in an email to submit photos of written statements summing up their personal experiences with sexual assault.
The photos, displayed on a portable art wall in the Lowry pit on Oct. 21-25, are intended to raise awareness about the frequency of sexual assault on campus.
“Sometimes, it seems a little removed from our personal lives if it isn’t something we have experienced ourselves,” said Ellie Kleber ’14, a founding member of k(NO)w, a group that is dedicated to the issue of sexual respect on campus and a sponsor of the project. “Bringing Project Unbreakable to Wooster will hopefully open up conversation about the prevalence of sexual misconduct specifically on our campus,” she said.
“Project Unbreakable is important to Wooster and its students because it grounds issues of rape and sexual assault in our community,” said Gina Christo ’14, another founding member of k(NO)w.
“Project Unbreakable is a response to the students on campus who say rape culture is ‘not an issue here’ [or] ‘it’s not that bad.’ It’s to show them, whether they realize it or not, that rape culture is all around them.”
Members of k(NO)w and other members of the campus community have shown concern that the issue appears too detached from the College, and hope that this project will bring it to light.
“It isn’t something that is only happening to people we see on the Internet,” Kleber added. “It is something that could have happened to someone who you sit next to in class, your sorority sister, your professor.”
k(NO)w ultimately hopes that the project will encourage Wooster students to become more passionate about the issue of sexual respect on campus.
Christo hopes it will get “the conversation going about sexual assault and rape on campus by putting it in a local context that makes it easier to grasp.”
“We want to make it clear that it is a problem on our campus, and if people see that it is something that happens at Wooster, maybe they will strive to make a difference,” Kleber said.
“If that difference is coming to k(NO)w and becoming more involved in this movement, great! If that difference is stopping and thinking ‘maybe I won’t touch this person like that…’ — just as good.”
“We want to create something that will cause some kind of internal dialogue — something that will make people stop and think about their actions.”