Column: Sexual violence needs a deadline

There are 16 days left of Sexual Assault Awareness Month. I’m keeping track because I can’t wait for it to be over.

Let me be clear: I’m glad this month exists, that we dedicate time to having conversations about sexual violence as a campus.

Many of my friends have participated in great campuswide events, such as “Walk a Mile,” which my fraternity, St. Anthony Hall, co-sponsored.

It was one of the firsts events in UNC’s history that brought together all four Greek councils. I am proud of everyone who took part in organizing events like “Walk a Mile,” and our campus is a better place because of their efforts.

I know all of this, yet I can’t stop counting the days till April is over. I want it to be done.

There’s being aware of sexual violence on campus, thinking “Oh yeah, that sucks that this happens at Carolina,” or “I had no idea men could be victims of assault, too!” And then there’s feeling it in your skin.

It is on my body. I cannot change the things that have happened on my body, to the people I love. I am acutely aware.

My pulse quickens when I walk past the spot where a man brutally harassed me. When I go to the dining hall for lunch I find myself in line behind someone who assaulted a friend of mine. I would like to be less aware.

I can’t stand Sexual Assault Awareness Month because I get emails from administrators about how seriously they take the problem of sexual assault, and I believe they do care about this issue — but caring is not enough. We need more than public relations. We need bold action that will make seeing perpetrators on campus a thing of the past.

I understand the theory of violence prevention, how it takes a long process of changing a culture and expanding that change from smaller enclaves to the larger community.

I get that it will take a long time to make this stop. I know that this work is a marathon, not a sprint. I understand all of this, but this month, I can’t remain patient.

Andrea Dworkin articulated this feeling so well in her 1983 speech “I want a Twenty-Four-Hour Truce During Which There Is No Rape.”

“We don’t have forever,” she says. “Some of us don’t have another week or another day to take time for you to discuss whatever it is that will enable you to go out into those streets and do something. We are very close to death. All women are. And we are very close to rape, and we are very close to beating.”

I’d add that it is not just women who experience interpersonal violence, that survivors of all genders matter deeply. There is no hierarchy of trauma; all this violence is unacceptable.

So in the spirit of the end of the semester and the end of this column, I want to ask for a deadline.

I just want it to end. I would like a deadline. I would like an exact date and time where this violence will stop.

How many more Aprils will pass before this gets better?