Sanjana Priyonti, Junior Editor
Sewanee’s annual Take Back The Night event saw campus-wide participation through a powerful march, empowering keynote speeches and a deeply emotional speak-out session.
Take Back The Night (TBTN) began in the 1970s, with women in cities like Philadelphia and San Francisco protesting violence through marches, witch hats, and candlelight vigils. The movement gained global traction with a 1976 international council in Belgium and grew stronger in the 1980s with the publication of Take Back the Night: Women on Pornography.
In the 1990s, the movement expanded to include rock concerts, campus speak-outs, and institutional policy reform – setting the stage for Katie Koestner, the first survivor of date rape to speak out publicly at age 18 and a TIME Magazine cover figure, to establish the official TBTN Foundation in 2001. The foundation broadened its mission to include all genders and provide education around sexual violence prevention.
Sewanee first hosted TBTN that same year, but the program faded until its revival in 2012 by Women and Gender Studies students who organized campus walks and Q&A sessions. In 2014, Koestner herself came to Sewanee and delivered her gripping “No-Yes” presentation to a full Guerry Auditorium. Her powerful talk emphasized the urgent need for open communication, consent and speaking up—principles that lie at the heart of the Take Back the Night movement she helped formalize. After another pause in Sewanee’s annual event, the director of Sewanee’s Title IX, Dr. Sylvia Gray and deputy coordinator Kaylei Goodine reignited the program. Since around 2021, it has been an annual, student-led event that carries forward the movement’s legacy of survivor support and gender-based violence prevention.
This year’s event brought the whole campus together. Sponsored by numerous student organizations—SGA, Order of the Gown, Phi society of 1883, STIX, ADT, BSU, The COHO, CHI PSI, PKE, DELT, GAMMA, GREEK COUNCIL, KD, KO, LAMDA CHI, PEER HEALTH, FIJI, DKE, SAAC and THETA PI—more than 200 participants marched from various rally points including the EQB/DEI building, Fowler Center, Mary Sue Cushman and Spencer Quad converging on the Main Quad with banners and chants calling for an end to sexual violence.
Keynote speakers Travis Parker, Sewanee’s International Student and Scholar Advisor, and Chloe Strysick, Chair of the Student Title IX committee, grounded the night in community and vulnerability.
Strysick emphasized creating “a space where we can gather to speak, listen, and heal,” acknowledging how “deeply personal” this event is for many. She spoke candidly about the challenge of reconciling experiences of sexual assault in a place “so deeply rooted in community,” where it’s “hard to accept that violence can exist… and yet, it happens. It happens more than we want to admit.” Reflecting on her own journey, she said, “For a long time, I struggled to recognize myself as a victim, a survivor… Society has trained us to turn away from these uncomfortable truths… to ‘move on.’ This silence is what perpetuates the cycle, and this is why speaking our truth matters so profoundly.”
“Experiencing sexual assault, as many of us have, can be hard to reconcile with, especially on this campus. In a place so deeply rooted in community, it’s hard to accept that violence can exist here. It’s difficult to understand how fear, confusion, and pain can coexist in a place where we should feel supported. And yet, it happens. It happens more than we want to admit.”
Strysick paved the way for others in attendance to share their own experiences with sexual assault. As more and more students spoke, it became evident that sexual violence isn’t as rare in this campus as we might have thought. The shared experience of assault and the stories brought the entire community together, as an outpour of hugs, and cheers of positivity echoed throughout the quad.
Thanks to Gray’s and Goodine’s initiative to spread the importance of awareness and create a safe campus space, more people are starting to become comfortable speaking up for themselves. “The Title IX office now has over 200 reports of sexual assault reported as compared to the 20 when it first started,” said Gray.
The evening ended with students lighting candles to stand vigil as Dr. Rachel Fredericks read a poem she wrote to commemorate Sewanee’s latest Take Back the Night. Her poem was a moving reminder of the power that we hold within ourselves and the change we can create when we come together as a community. “ When Tears Roll Down The Smiles We Are Forced To Display / When Our Hearts Are Overwhelmed By Their Own Beat / When Time Is No Indication Of The Progress Of Healing / When Hate Seems Inevitable But, We Know Love Wins / We Will…Take Back The Night”.