The annual Take Back the Night keynote address and march took place Thursday at Scripps Amphitheater.
Despite the rain and cold wind, students and Athens residents continued to march down the streets chanting slogans and holding signs to address the problem of sexual violence.
Starting in Scripps 111, the annual Take Back the Night keynote address and march was part of a week-long series of events held by the Student Senate Women’s Affairs Commission.
This year's march was marked as inclusive as both men and women were able to participate.
Keynote speaker Stephanie Gilmore began the event Thursday giving a speech that addressed rape culture and how it affects both men and women.
“One in five women will experience sexual violence of some sort during her college career,” Gilmore said. “It is our job … to ask why, why is there such a discrepancy?”
According to Gilmore, more than 40 sexual assault cases have been reported on campus at Ohio University in the last three years.
Gilmore later gave a speech titled “Mi nombre es Stephanie Gilmore y yo soy una puta,” which translates to “My name is Stephanie Gilmore and I’m a slut.”
“Men and women, boys and girls, label me as such. Why? I wear short skirts. I wear make up. I drink alcohol. I am a woman,” Gilmore said. “This is the current social script for many women and men in our society. It is a script bounded by histories of race, class and sexual identity, as well as by gender.”
The march began and ended at the Scripps Amphitheater where participants shouted chants, including “Whatever we wear, wherever we go, yes means yes and no means no,” and “One, two, three, four, I am not your f--king whore; five, six, seven, eight, use your hand to masturbate.”
Jessica Arnold, the Women’s Affair commissioner, said the goal of the event was “survivor empowerment and survivors taking back their night.”
“(The march) is like a presence on campus that doesn’t normally exist,” Arnold, a first-year graduate student studying international development, said. “So … the space is really empowering for the survivors and the co-survivors that participate in Take Back the Night.”
Bronwyn Doubet, a participant, said the march is an important event held at OU every year.
“(The march) is very emotional and brings people together, both allies and survivors,” Doubet, a junior studying creative writing, said.
Maddi Rotunda, a freshman studying marketing who has copy edited for The Post, said OU’s reputation as the No. 1 party school goes hand in hand with sexual assault crimes.
“The reality is, in order to change things, we have to do more than just march,” Rotunda said. “But this is a really good step to making people aware of the consequences of sexual violence.”
At the end of Gilmore’s speech, a member of the audience said it has been 37 years since the Take Back the Night march began in Athens. Gilmore said that history made it even more important, as the problem of sexual harassment “should have been solved, but it’s not."
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“Thirty-seven years is 37 years too long,” Gilmore said at the end of her speech. “And we can’t wait 37 years more.”
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