Sexual assault survivors and supporters of awareness gathered with the Office of Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention & Prevention to design T-shirts for their 2016 Clothesline Project on Tuesday. Participants paint T-shirts to commemorate their own experiences or those of their friends and family, and all of the shirts will be unveiled on Greene Street as part of Sexual Assault Awareness Month on April 18.
Sabrina Johnson, a graduate assistant who works with SAVIP, was one of the volunteers out manning the table on Green Street.
"The paint party [Tuesday] is the kick-off for Sexual Assault Awareness Month," Johnson said.
Clothesline Project is a national organization founded in 1990 in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. The organization's website describes the project as "a vehicle for women affected by violence to express their emotions by decorating a shirt. They then hang the shirt on a clothesline to be viewed by others as testimony to the problem of violence against women." The different colors of the shirts represent the different experiences the creators have had with assault, ranging from the nature of the attack to the cause of the violence.
South Carolina consistently ranks amongst the most deadly states for women with regard to domestic violence.
Marjorie Riddle Duffie serves as Public Relations and Marketing Director for Student Health Services, of which SAVIP is a part. She emphasized that the Clothesline Project is one of the biggest events the organization puts on each year.
"It is a very popular event that we really do to support survivors of sexual assault," she said, "and that friends of survivors can also share their support through artwork on T-shirts."
While there is no specific goal for the number shirts collected, Johnson said that SAVIP has already received requests for more than 100 shirts. SAVIP also invites various organizations on-campus such as residence halls to create shirts for the display. Tuesday is just the first "paint party" for this year's display.
USC's project is one of more than 500 projects around the nation and world culminating in the creation of 50,000-60,000 shirts in 41 states and five countries.
The Clothesline Project is not the only event on campus in recognition of Sexual Assault Awareness Month. SAVIP will host a screening of the Academy Award-winning documentary "The Hunting Ground" on March 29 along with a panel featuring the work's director, Kirby Dick. They will also participate in the Walk a Mile In Their Shoes march to the Statehouse on April 14 and National Denim Day on April 27.