Denim Day Promotes Sexual Assault Awareness

Students wore jeans on April 23 to show awareness of sexual assault on the UW-Milwaukee campus.

Denim Day booths, sponsored by the Women’s Resource Center, were set up around campus, supplied with buttons, stickers, books, and bracelets to give to students to spread the word about stopping sexual assault.

Lizzy Leberfing, a volunteer for the Woman’s Resource Center, helped run one of the booths. The booth was set up by the library Grind. She encouraged students to take the materials and take ‘selfies’ with them to help get the word out in a way that was relevant to students.

“Anything that people upload in response to Denim Day on UWM campus and hashtag ‘UWMDenimDay’, it’ll be pulled up through the Woman’s Resource Center account on Facebook and it’ll be posted,” she says. This will help spread more awareness on campus.

Denim Day has been going on within the United States for 15 years as a part of Sexual Violence Awareness Month. It’s a day to honor an Italian sexual assault court case where a woman reported being raped but was not taken seriously.

The reason? Because her jeans were too tight, therefore she must’ve consented to the act.

When the women working at the courthouse heard about the outcome of the case, they decided to wear jeans to work the next day to show their support for the victim. It has been a tradition for bringing awareness ever since.

This particular Denim Day at UWM was to raise awareness for sexual assault happening on campus and defining what the meaning of consent is.

Buttons saying “Can I kiss you?” were handed out to students to demonstrate that consent is always needed before initiating any type of sexual contact with another person.

Sexual assault on college campuses has been an issue for years, including UWM.

Recent numbers show that there were only two reported incidents of sexual assault on the UWM campus in 2012. Does this accurately portray sexual assault incidents on campus? Of course not.

Statistics show that every two minutes, an American is sexually assaulted. Roughly 238,000 people are assaulted every year. Eighty percent of the victims are under the age of 30.

Why aren’t more incidents shown at the UWM campus if it is such a prevalent issue?

“The saddest part about sexual assault is that most of the time it goes unreported so the statistics are never truly accurate, I feel,” Leberfing says.

Many people are too scared to report about what happened to them. Others blame themselves. Others don’t believe what they experienced was assault because they knew their assaulter. And, of course, campus statistics only reflect assaults on campus.

Denim Day organizers hope to bring about the change to make students more aware of their actions to stop sexual assault on campus and to also bring strength to the women who are sexually assaulted but are too scared to do anything about it.

Students can find more information about Denim day and sexual assault prevention in the Women’s Resource Center, located in the Union in room WG93.