Noelle Arias / Roundup
A rainbow of t-shirts with hand written messages flapping in the chill of the April wind was what caught the eye of many who walked along the Pierce College Mall on Wednesday.
The Los Angeles Community College District’s Board of Trustees declared April 21st as Denim Day which coincides with April being Sexual Assault Awareness Month for all nine of the district’s campuses.
The Pierce College Campus Violence Response Team, also known as CVRT, was in charge of putting together an event for Denim Day.
Holly Hagan, who works in the Pierce College Bookstore, is one of the team leads of the event along side criminal justice teacher, Kathy Oborn.
Hagan explained that in Italy, a 17-year-old girl was raped by her 45-year-old driving instructor. The driving instructor was found guilty but the conviction was later overturned because the girl was wearing denim jeans and the court felt that she would have had to assist him in the removal of her jeans therefore the sex did not constitute as rape.
“So on Denim Day we were denim to support that rape is never consensual,” said Hagan.
A grant from the U.S. Department of Justice allowed CVRT to purchase t-shirts and markers in a vast array of colors so that anyone who had gone through any type of abuse or knew anyone who had undergone abuse could decorate a shirt to share their stories and express their feelings at no charge. Once a shirt was completed it was hung up and displayed as a Clothesline Project.
Certain colored shirts represented different types of abuse but victims could choose any color “as long as they get out what they need to get out,” said Hagan.
Around 25 shirts were made by Pierce College students and staff and hung on the edges of the canopy surrounding the booth.
Two of those shirts belonged to Brandi McMullen, a 21-year-old art and linguistics major here at Pierce.
On one of her shirts she wrote the well known bible verse Corinthians 1:13, which starts out with “Love is patient, love is kind,” recited McMullen. “I have forgiven my abusers,” she said, “this is a good way to let others now what I’ve been through and allow them to relate to it”.
Some shirts were decorated with art work and simple, to-the-point sayings while others read a full story from top to bottom. Most who took time to stop and read some of the shirts stood quiet in respect, but others approached those who were working the booth simply to say “I’m shocked,” or “this is amazing”.
Armed with her teal sexual assault awareness ribbon, Hagan was ready and eager to hand out t-shirts and markers or to comfort victims who had just shared their thoughts and experiences.
“The struggle to get the marker on the shirt represents the struggle we’ve all been through,” said Pierce student Alyssa Dori.
The 22-year-old sociology major drew this from her experience of being sexually abused in kindergarten by another kindergartener which was deemed “acceptable” and later being sexually abused at the age of 17 by a physical therapist.
“I think [Denim Day] is wonderful and I hope that one day it can become more of an even rather than just a booth on the Mall,” said Dori.
The majority of the shirts on display were from previous semesters. A wheelchair bound Pierce student, who wishes to remain anonymous, pointed out a black shirt in front of the Freudian Sip that she had made last semester in October.
Hagan explained that it is helpful for students and staff to come back and find their shirts as a way to remember what had happened in their past and further motivate them to push forward with their lives.
The CVRT team were out on Denim Day in their brightly decorated booth from 9 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. passing out informative pamphlets and free teal ribbons and lanyards (the color teal representing Sexual Assault Awareness Month) to any anti-abuse supporters.
“These are only from people on campus,” Hagan said as she looked around at all the shirts hanging from the booth and the clotheslines along the mall, “and this is such a small part of our world.”
For information and services relating to any type of abuse visit www.valleytraumacenter.org.
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