Bishop’s University students prepare for Take Back the Night march
This year, Bishop’s University’s annual Take Back the Night (TBTN) March is going to look a little different. In order to keep the BU community safe, the march coordinators have created new, innovative ways to reach the student population and greater community through an online forum, a ‘zine’, and a stay at home march.
Take Back the Night is a worldwide effort to combat sexual violence and violence against women. Since 2018, a small group of BU students have been organizing a march in solidarity with the worldwide movement.
“It’s really a march to bring the BU community together,” said Anika Malone, one of the head coordinators for this year’s march. “It gives a space for survivors to take back the voice, spaces, and power that was taken from them.”
Taking public health and safety into consideration, the Bishop’s University TBTN group have decided to approach their campaign in a different way for 2020. “We’ve really had to diversify things this year, considering we can’t conglomerate,” said Malone. “We’ve actually redone everything for the event, starting with the forum.”
For two years now, the BU TBTN group has hosted a forum for students to discuss their concerns about sexual assault and gender-based violence on campus. This year’s forum took place last week and was both in person and streamed virtually. “The forum is really what sets the tone for the whole year,” said Scotia Sharpe, the second coordinator for the march. “It’s where students bring their complaints, ideas, and comments about what they want to see done in the community, and we base our work off of the response.”
From the forum rose a list of desired actions from Bishop’s students which includes support groups for men, extra security cameras and light in certain areas of campus, healthy sexual education, and a perpetrator data bank. These demands are all centered on minimizing harm in their community and moving forward to a safer, healthier university campus, and will be addressed by the new Sexual
Culture Committee.
“We were lucky enough to have the Indigenous Cultural Alliance speak at the forum and, since then, we’ve had our social media campaign blow up,” said Malone. The student community has come together in support for the movement by posting to their social media using the hashtag #Ipledge.
“There’s been a bunch of individual friend groups, clubs, the rugby team, they’re all participating and it hasn’t slowed down,” said Malone. “I even have had teachers send in videos.”
The community support for the
march has yet to falter and, even with the pandemic restrictions, the coordinators and committee are excited to approach the cause in a new way. “We’re basically bringing the march to people’s homes.” said Malone. “We’re going to have a live feed that people can tune into the speeches and we’ll have committee members leading chants around town where students live.”
The stay at home march will be taking place on Nov. 12 at 8 p.m. “Our goal is to light up Lennoxville with sound in solidarity with survivors.” added Malone.