December 4, 2012

A8

Life

Project Unbreakable

Tuesday, December 4, 2012

National campaign, viral Tumblr visit, spotlight University’s sexual assault victims

By Anne-Marie Albracht Cavalier Daily Staff Writer

Grace Brown is a self-professed introvert.

Calm and contemplative, she prefers to keep her thoughts to herself and to digest the world from behind her camera’s thick lens. Through her looking glass, she quietly snaps shots of men and women, girls and boys, young and old and rich and poor. She silently captures intimate images of hurt and heartbreak, sadness and betrayal and hope and empowerment, all in the same frame. She doesn’t push, pry or ask questions. She doesn’t need to — her pictures say it all.

Brown’s bold photographic-project-turnedblogosphere-sensation, Project Unbreakable, was launched overnight. Surrounded by victims of sexual violence all her life, Brown recalls waking up one morning with the idea of photographing these victims holding stark white signs inscribed with the haunting words of their attackers.

“I was out late at night with a friend last October and she suddenly just blurted out her story,” Brown said. “I was incredibly sad and I just couldn’t shake it. That night I went to bed so upset, counting the number of people in my life who’d been sexually abused and I woke up the next morning with the idea for the project, knowing it was something I had to do.”

From that point on, Brown let the project develop organically through word of mouth and social media. Now, a year after its inception, Project Unbreakable holds a spot in TIME Magazine’s Top 30 Tumblr Blogs to Follow, and after a 16-city U.S. tour, the project will take the international stage with showings in London and Paris. And Brown is barely 20.

The refreshing and yet upsetting nature of the project is what moved project participant Emily Loranger, a fourth-year College student double majoring in sociology and women, gender and sexuality, to bring Project Unbreakable to Charlottesville.

“The first time I participated, I felt like I finally had found a place to tell people that these assaults happened to me and that they weren’t something I had to be ashamed of,” Loranger said. “I chose to show my face. Of course, not everyone wants to do that, but I proved that these words had no power over me. I wanted victims here to have the chance

Courtesy projectunbreakable.tumblr.com

Courtesy projectunbreakable.tumblr.com

to have the same experience.”

Working with her boss Claire Kaplan, director of sexual and domestic violence services at the Women’s Center, Loranger convinced Brown to visit Grounds. In early November, Brown spent two days photographing both Charlottesville residents and University students at Lee Park, finishing her visit with a question and answer session Kaplan said was well-attended despite the fact it fell on election night.

“One of our number-one goals is creating outlets for survivors to express themselves,” Kaplan said. “[Project Unbreakable] is a wonderful intersection between visual arts and a way of giving survivors a voice.”

For Loranger, who was assaulted both as a child and more recently off-Grounds by a fellow student last fall, participating not only gave her a voice but also helped her decide to pursue a hearing with the Sexual Misconduct Board, the disciplinary body on Grounds that hears alleged sexual assault cases.

“Seeing these people and how strong they were gave me the extra push to continue going through with [the process],” Loranger said.

The pictures of University students should be posted on the blog sometime during the next few months, Brown said. Meanwhile, Loranger and Kaplan are looking for new ways to foster awareness about sexual violence and keep students thinking about the issue before it reaches them personally.

“I think sexual violence is something we think we talk about but don’t,” Loranger said. “When people see pictures of students from their own school holding these signs and coming forward as victims, sexual assault becomes an undeniable issue. You can’t ignore that these are the people sitting beside you in class and the dining hall. You have to address it.”

That is exactly what Brown intended for her blog to do. Brown is on her way to achieving her goals, but the University is still looking to find its own way to better help student sexual assault victims. Such efforts are sometimes impeded by a lack of University funding, Kaplan said.

That shouldn’t stop efforts to combat sexual abuse, though, Brown said.

“Whatever it is you have in mind, just do it,” she said. “... It’s so important to remember we all have the capacity to get up and make a difference.”

Courtesy projectunbreakable.tumblr.com

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When Money Does Buy Happiness

efore I came to Europe you not want to live, study for the semester, I used and party in another country. to think it was silly when Besides the price of your flight people said they couldn’t study to Europe and back, you could expect about the abroad because same budget.

Living in Lyon it was too expenBoy, was I wrong. sive. In my head, Roughly 17 weeks, I compared it 12 countries, 15 to living off cities, 11 plane Grounds at U.Va. rides, and 14 bus/ After all, tuition train rides later and housing are — some of which all roughly the may not have been same in Charlegitimate — I can lottesville and finally accept that abroad. I thought the loss of my forliving expenses merly plentiful life would be too.

VALERIE CLEMENS savings is in sight.

The money lost With just enough in the dollareuro conversion of a weekly gro- cash to get me frugally through cery trip, an occasional movie, three weeks and one more trip a new sweater, a pair of boots — my flight home — part of and some alcohol couldn’t be me remains angry and anxious enough of a difference to make that I have let my account bal-

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ance reach rock bottom for the first time since I started earning my own money five years ago. I remember the endless hours serving artificially warm steaks from a smelly kitchen to cranky, cheap customers, cleaning tables and sweeping underneath booths until midnight, and then I think of how the monetary rewards reaped from the dark days are almost dry. Nothing is left to comfort my suppressed memories.

I’m currently sitting on my last train ride, traveling from Valencia to Barcelona, where I will catch a plane tonight back to Lyon , thinking about ways I could have saved money this semester. First, I could have traveled less — the aforementioned plane and train rides were the Please see Clemens, Page A9

Good Old Friends

hree weeks ago I turned doors of Chantilly High School 22, and in the three weeks — I still wonder how we were b e f o r e a n d a f t e r m y able to function at 7:24 a.m. — birthday I saw my high school there was still a Blockbuster in friends more than in the past town, Sarah Palin was culturally three years combined. It seems relevant and we wrote on each other’s Facebook somewhat parawalls, not each doxical. With Urban Legends other’s timelines. each passing day, Even though time month and year, keeps marching we’ve moved faron, we are inexther away from t r i c a b l y l i n ke d the times we by our common thought AP World past, and as History was the graduation looms hardest class in and the future the history of the becomes scarier world and heard each day, it makes AC/DC’s “Thunsense that we are derstruck” under reaching for the the Friday night KATIE URBAN people who knew lights as the footus when we were ball team ran younger. onto the field.

As a first year, I didn’t want The last time we entered the

to hang out exclusively with my high school friends for fear I would miss out on new friendship opportunities. And as a first year, the last thing I wanted to do was appear as though I missed high school — even though I did — because I thought everyone else already thought high school was a distant memory. By the time I was a second and third year — when I really no longer missed high school and had cultivated a solid group of college friends — I didn’t need to hang out with my high school friends as much.

Plus, if we did hang out all the time we would run the risk of looking like our former peers at Virginia Tech who still seem to party together every weekend.

But when my high school Please see Urban, Page A9

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Say Anything

n Halloween, one of my disregard for humanity. I best friends was drugged have no explanation for the at a party at a frater- origin of the personality traits nity’s satellite house. She told that cause someone to have a me about it the next day after desire to drug another person a morning visit to Student or cause bodily harm.

But I do know why this Health, feeling scared, confused and alone. I did my behavior persists at the Unibest to comfort her, knowing versity despite our best efforts there wasn’t much I could to stop it. As a community, do to alleviate her pain. She we fail at holding these bad was extremely fortunate in apples accountable.

At one of the nation’s most that the man or men who did this to her did not assault her, prestigious institutions, there and her friends took care of is no mandatory training her all night. I spoke with the for all personnel, including president of the fraternity students, regarding sexual assault and in question Sarah Bingol misconand Assisduct. Nor is tant Dean GUEST COLUMNIST there trainof Students Michael Citro and received ing that addresses prevensatisfactory responses that tion. Procedures for reporting were apologetic and assured and prosecuting an incident me that the Inter-Frater- are unclear and ambiguous. nity Council would work to And most importantly, at one increase their efforts to edu- of the only universities in cate members about the rep- the nation where your fellow students can expel you for rehensibility of such actions.

But it is not enough. Educa- lying to a professor or stealtional programs that repeat ing a mug from the bookstore, the same information are the same students who have not enough. The reform of pledged to uphold the comthe sexual assault policy is munity of trust do not hold not enough. Going to Stu- perpetrators of these crimes dent Health is not enough, responsible for their actions.

It will not matter how many especially when they tell you there is nothing they can do vigils, rallies or seminars aside from examining you for we have for those who are signs of sexual assault, which affected by sexual violence is what they told my friend. if we do not put pressure Nothing is going to stop this on those who commit these pernicious, vile behavior until crimes. It is imperative that we hold our friends account- we do more to hold these able and refuse to tolerate offenders accountable for this abuse to our community their actions.

I know that victims are freof trust.

To be clear, you do not have quently unwilling or unable to be in a fraternity to have to prosecute their attackers in an inherent disrespect for court. Nevertheless, there are others. I am a member of a other ways to create change. sorority, and I truly believe If you know of someone who in the benefits of Greek life.

Greek life, even at its worst, Please see Bingol, Page A9 does not encourage wanton

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