USC's Clothesline Project revealed their final product in honor of Sexual Assault Awareness Month after several weeks of having students design T-shirts.
Clothesline is a national project that encourages survivors of sexual violence — or anyone who has been affected by it — to convey their emotions and experiences by designing a T-shirt. USC's project was primarily put on by Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention and Prevention. Tiffany Rogers, a lead advocate and program coordinator for SAVIP, said that Clothesline is just one of several events throughout April that aims to raise sexual assault and violence awareness.
"I think T-shirts just really provide an opportunity for students to be creative," Rogers said. "It's just raising awareness about the prevalence of it, as well as allowing students to be very creative in how they talk about what's happened to them or what's happened to people they know, or just speaking out against sexual assault."
Since the middle of March, SAVIP has been holding "paint parties" at various locations on campus, including three at the Healthy Carolina farmer's market. Rogers said that student organizations and residence halls also hosted their own Clothesline events.
"We'd make kits for them that had the shirts and then paints or markers," Rogers said. "They would make them at their own paint parties and then bring them back to us."
On April 27, SAVIP is hosting a "denim day" to encourage faculty and staff to wear jeans and donate to Sexual Assault Awareness Month. SAVIP also participated in events for Domestic Violence Awareness Month in October and Stalking Awareness month in January.
As a part of Student Health Services, SAVIP always looks to work with students and help educate them on any matters pertaining to sexual health.
"I think that, especially for college students, consent can get very tricky. That's something we hear a lot in our office — just miseducation or misunderstanding of what consent is," Rogers said. "We also do a lot of partnering with student orgs. If they have events that they want to do or they're interested in collaborating with us, we can always be there to support, bring materials — anything that they want to do."
Ultimately, the goal of USC's Clothesline Project was to encourage students to share their experiences with sexual violence and assault in a creative, relatable and inspiring way.