Dozens of students and at least 20 fraternities and sororities have joined forces to protest a university-issued recommendation aimed at blocking student victims of sex crimes from naming their alleged attacker in an annual awareness event.
The venue in question is not new: For the past 17 years, student survivors of sexual attacks have turned T-shirts into an expression of rape awareness and an outlet for their complicated emotions. But this year, the university’s Clothesline Project has banned students from writing perpetrators’ names on the shirts to protect itself from the possibility of a defamation of character lawsuit.
University Health Center Director Sacared Bodison said she issued the ban about a week ago, saying, “The university doesn’t wish to be in the position where it can be sued for defamation of character.”
The university’s Office of Sexual Assault Prevention sponsors the event and Bodison said that affiliation could raise questions about who was liable for damages if an alleged attacker was able to prove defamation.
But students who help organize the Clothesline Project said the university’s position amounts to censorship and wrongly silences victims of a crime that is commonly perpetrated against college-age women, but is vastly underreported on college campuses.
Maxine Norcross, a senior physiology and neurobiology major who made a shirt for the event last year and has close ties to the project, said that while students are angered over the ban and have considered asking a judge to keep the university from censoring them, they are also considering dropping the university’s financial backing.
“Having the university sponsor the event is kind of lending their support to the cause,” Norcross said. “And by having to change it to a student-run event and losing university support, it’s sending the message to survivors that the university doesn’t support them or care about them.”
Various offices within the health center will meet with university lawyers today to discuss whether a compromise can be reached between students’ right to free speech and university interests, said Mollie Monahan-Kreishman, the health center’s sexual assault prevention coordinator. The Clothesline Project is set to begin Thursday.
“My number one priority is to make sure that student voices get heard,” said Monahan-Kreishman.
Dianna Huffman, a university media law lecturer, said the university could open itself to lawsuits based on their direct support of the project. If a person’s name is written on a Clothesline Project shirt and the person didn’t commit a sexual assault, the person could sue for defamation of character, Huffman said.
“It’s not unreasonable for the university to be concerned about being sued,” Huffman said.
A.J. Arrese, vice president of Delta Tau Delta and a member of the Interfraternity Council’s executive board, said that upon hearing of the ban, he gained widespread support from the Greek community to express solidarity with Clothesline Project participants on Friday.
“[The university] may be giving students the impression that it does not support victims” and is denying students part of the healing process, Arrese wrote in a letter he sent Bodison on Friday, which included the signatures of 22 of the 23 fraternity presidents.
Arrese plans to resend the letter this week with the last fraternity signature. The sororities will also ask members to sign the petition early this week.
“Being Greek, we are aware that we are part of the sexual assault problem. Not the whole problem, but a big part of it. We take responsibility for it,” said Arrese, who is also a member of Student Advocates for Education about Rape.
He added that even if fraternity members’ names appear on the shirts, he supports victims’ right to name their attackers because they get “an incredible amount of healing from these shirts.”
Norcross said the ban may raise questions about Title IX, a federal law that requires publicly funded schools to ensure that gender inequity does not inhibit academic success. If the university censors shirt designs, Norcross said, then it blocks students’ ability to cope with sexual assault – which disproportionately affects women.
Huffman said it would be difficult for students to cite other laws in opposing the university’s ban. The university’s right to defense against a defamation suit prevails, she said.
The discussion to drop the university’s sponsorship for the Clothesline Project could also be problematic. The university does most of the organizing and provides shirts and painting materials, Norcross said. Monahan-Kreishman said the project’s longevity would be at risk if university funding was dropped permanently.
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