Students passing through Baker Center on Thursday may have noticed many people wearing purple shirts throughout the building.
Those purple shirts were given out by an event called A Mile Together which is sponsored by Better Bystanders in cooperation with POWER/GAMMA, Student Senate and the Office of Health Promotion.
“Mile Together is a week-long programming series that seeks to raise awareness of power-based personal violence,” Ben Braddock, graduate assistant for sexual assault prevention and relationship violence, said.
The main event of A Mile Together started at 10 a.m. Thursday in Baker Center, in which T-shirts and snacks were handed out to passersby to help raise awareness for what Braddock and other organizers called the “Three D’s.”
“Whenever you’re uncomfortable, you can be direct, you can delegate or you can distract.” Braddock said. “Our main goal today is to get the Three D’s to every student on campus because the more students that know the options they have ... the safer our campus will be.”
By the end of the day, over 500 T-shirts were given out, more than double the amount from the previous year.
The purpose of the T-shirts was to help raise awareness on ending power-based personal violence, Matthew Hall, the assistant director of the Office of Health Promotion, said.
“People will be wearing T-shirts up and down the escalators throughout the day based on class change times,” Hall said, calling them "walking billboards" for the cause.
A Mile Together was formed by students at OU after problems arose with a similar event, Walk a Mile in Her Shoes, which is a national movement that encourages participants to march in high heels.
“Inclusivity was the biggest issue ... I think too often Walk a Mile in Her Shoes puts masculinity in this narrow box which makes people uncomfortable,” Braddock said. "It genders sexual violence in the way that we know gender minorities experience it more ... Saying that high heels are 'her' shoes, made a lot of people uncomfortable."
However, Braddock does not intend A Mile Together to be a competing event with Walk a Mile in Her Shoes.
“This movement is about helping (Walk a Mile in Her Shoes) become better,” he said. “I don’t want them to be two separate movements, my end goal is one movement.”
Many people passing by remarked how effective the event was.
“I love the fact that the awareness happens in Baker Center,” Jenny Hall-Jones, the Dean of Students, said. “I really enjoy this kind of openness where everyone can be included.”
Other students, such as Megan Jungkunz, a freshman studying computer science, felt that the event was useful in spreading awareness as well.
“Not everyone knows what it's about,” she said. “People will see others wearing T-shirts and they’ll come and ask about it.”
As of now, A Mile Together is only an event at OU, but Braddock hopes to see it expand to other campuses and conferences across the country.
“Now that we’ve been successful here, our goal is to spread the idea of how we can reach the national community,” Braddock added. “I think we have the data to show people that this is something special.”
