Our Story shares stories of sexual assault survivors

The Great Hall in the Student Union was filled with chairs, teal ribbon decorations and a row of tissue boxes for Our Story, an interactive event for sexual assault survivors to share their stories, that took place Wednesday.

Senior Hannah Petersen, an event coordinator, said she organized the event because she is not satisfied with how the University is responding to sexual assault.

“We are disappointed in the inaction that the University has taken around these issues, unfortunately it is so pervasive,” she said.

“We both have friends that have gone through these experiences. It’s just unsettling to us.”

Senior Emma Johnson, an event coordinator, said the purpose of the event is to open up the discussion for sexual assault survivors.

“It’s survivor oriented and survivor driven, but we want it to reach everyone at Carolina,” Johnson said.

Stories were shared — some by survivors, others submitted and read by a narrator.

Johnson said with the recent discussion of sexual assault at UNC in the media, it is important to provide survivors an opportunity to open up.

“Carolina has never expelled a student for raping another student,” Johnson said. “So that means there are people walking around campus every single day who have to see their rapist, and that’s absolutely not fair.”

In its 2014-15 annual report, the UNC Equal Opportunity and Compliance Office listed expulsion as one of the sanctions given after Title IX violations, but the report did not specify how often this sanction was imposed or for what kind of violation.

Organizers said this isn’t the only event that will help survivors of sexual assault.

“We don’t want this to be a one-stop conversation,” Petersen said. “We are going to ask administration to allow us to create a task force committee.”

The main focus of the event was listening to the stories of those who have lived through sexual assault, Johnson said.

“We would love to have administration really, truly hear these stories and hear what it’s like to be a survivor and what they live through on a daily basis,” Johnson said. “Because unless you have a lived experience I think it’s really really hard to understand.”

Senior Emily Morton attended the event and said she learned how to be a support for survivors.

“I think the biggest thing would just be how I, as a person, can support survivors on this campus,” she said. “There’s a lot of things I personally can’t change about this university, but as a person I can be a better friend, a better classmate, a better peer, so just to learn how I could help the survivors.”

Johnson said she’s not going to stop bringing awareness to sexual assault on college campuses any time soon.

“We also want to start changing the narrative about sexual assault and rape at Carolina, just because there are so many problems about victim blaming and what is rape and what is sexual consent,” she said.

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