Get the Message

ACTIVISTS ARE NOT usually afraid of the outdoors. Every spring, hundreds of students rally out in the Yard and on the Boston Common. But for women, the very areas in which they rally or walk by day, become hostile and threatening at night.

Tonight Harvard/Radcliffe students will march through the streets of Cambridge to protest violence against women, and to cap off a week of educational activities about the issue.

The "Take Back the Night Rally"--sponsored by the Radcliffe Union of Students--is the fifth one of its kind at Harvard. This year, inspired by massive student involvement in last month's March for Women's Lives, RUS has invited 35 Boston-area college groups to march, in addition to 15 Harvard undergraduate and graduate groups.

But the outdoors is not the only place to which Thursday's marchers will call attention. Most rapes of college age women occur indoors, by men they know. The organizers of this year's march are placing particular emphasis on the frequency of "date" or acquaintance rape, the most common form of rape at Harvard.

A Kent State study found that women students have a one-in-eight chance of being raped during their college years. A survey of 500 Brown students revealed that 16 percent of women students had been raped by men they were dating.

And while women and men students should protest these increasing incidences of date rape by joining tonight's march, Harvard administrators would also do well to pay attention to this week of education about violence toward women.

While many colleges sponsor freshman week workshops and encounter groups focusing on rape and sexual violence, Harvard has not adequately supported student groups that have worked to spread information about the problems.

Only about one-half of freshman proctors regularly accept the offer to hold a Response workshop, arguing that date rape is not a sufficiently important issue or is too disturbing for a study break. And while the Freshman Dean's Office reportedly supports the spread information on the subjects, Response staffers were recently told that there wasn't enough time at monthly proctor meetings to urge proctors to hold date rape workshops.

Unlike other colleges, Harvard has never published a study on the number of its students who have been raped on campus. The University seems to hope that if it ignores violence against women, the problem will go away. The facts speak otherwise.

The "Take Back the Night" marchers will bring their message to the streets tonight. Join them. And then take the message back inside as well.