Clothesline Project promotes sexual assault awareness

TANISSA RINGO thedmnews@gmail.com

Rallying Against Sexual Assault held a T-shirt decorating event for the Clothesline Project at Tuesday night in the Thad Cochran Research Center. Students brought awareness to the issue of sexual violence by creating T-shirts to express their stories.

RASA is an open student organization under the Violence Intervention and Prevention: Survivor Support office that brings education and awareness of gender-based violence to students who are passionate about the topic. The organization is comprised of confidential advocates that work with stu - dents that have experienced sexual assault, intimate partner violence and stalking.

The Clothesline Project is an interactive exhibit that features written experiences by survivors of interpersonal violence and all forms of violence. T-shirts created during Tuesday night’s event were put on display Wednesday, April 5, on the Union Terrace.

The organization hasn’t been consistent in putting on The Clothesline Project exhibit, but co-advisors Bhakti Patel and Christin Dobbs are glad they brought the event back to campus this year.

Patel, a second-year graduate student who works in the VIP office, thinks the event is a “cathartic” experience for ev -

The Ole Miss baseball team has found itself in a bit of a pickle here at the midway point of the season.

Heading into the 2023 campaign, no one really expected the Rebels to win the National Championship again this year. But most would have expected Ole Miss to have a solid season with some return- ing faces and good offseason acquisitions. Unfortunately, it hasn’t been smooth sailing for the defending champs.

The Rebels sit with an overall record of 17-11 and are just 1-8 against SEC opponents. Before winning last Saturday’s game against the Texas A&M Aggies, Ole Miss started 0-7 in conference play for the first time since 1935.

Those seven consecutive losses also constituted

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continued from page 1 eryone involved and hopes the exhibit will bring awareness to the community.

“Making a T-shirt is really for empowerment in itself,” Patel said. “I think it’s always powerful reading the T-shirts on a clothesline in the middle of campus because you always think ‘Maybe that could be my friend.’ It definitely brings awareness.”

Dobbs, in addition to being the co-advisor of RASA, is the program manager of the VIP office.

“I think it’s always really amazing to see students engaged in activities where you can see how it’s impacting them and how it’s building community for them,” Dobbs said. “I think that’s really valuable and rewarding.”

“Just being able to have this opportunity to educate campus, I’m grateful for,” Dobbs said.

Freshman nursing major Breanna Moseley is a RASA member. She attended Tuesday night and described feeling supported by her fellow attendees.

“It’s emotional. Especially seeing other people’s shirts. It’s good to know that there’s people around me that have shared the same experiences,” Moseley said. “They don’t compare traumas here. Everyone is here for each other, and that’s what I really like about it.”

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Davidson Elementary School in Oxford and a UM graduate.

“I think, ‘What’s in the corner? Are there shelves in the way?’ You think about it, and it’s real,” Lewis said.

Lewis said during her first day at the school teachers were prepped for various lockdowns by their resource police officer, including if an active shooter came into the school. She realized at that moment no school or town was safe and that she would be willing to sacrifice herself to protect her students.

“As a teacher, I feel that most teachers would put themselves in the line of fire for someone else; as for myself, I know I would put my life on the line for them,” she said.

In recent years, conversations about education have moved from how to teach children to how to protect their lives.

“I saw a post the other day. The premise of it was every single teacher that you know has thought about what they would do,” Lewis said.

Grace Webb, a senior elementary education major and fifth grade teacher at Central Elementary in Oxford, started preparing for that scenario when she heard what happened in Nashville.

“I was at lunch, and one of the teachers next to me was on her phone and got an alert about the Nashville shooting. We got to talking about another school shooting, and I had to ask, ‘Wait, which one was that?’ The fact that we even said that is crazy and sad,” Webb said. “I am hoping this will wake more people up. I was sad that I didn’t have a reaction, that I wasn’t more shocked.”

In 2023, there have already been 96 gun-related incidents at schools, according to the K-12 database. A gun related incident is defined as when a gun is brandished, is fired or a bullet hits school property for any reason, regardless of the number of victims, time or day of the week.

Webb is from Arkansas, and her main worry as a teacher used to be how to protect her students from natural disasters, such as tornadoes. Now, she says, they practice more active shooter drills at her school than they do tornado drills.

When you ask a child about their dream job, many say becoming an astronaut, president or teacher. Children across the country look up to their teachers and realize how they are committing their lives to not only their education but to their safety as well.

Paige Barnett, a junior secondary math education major and student teacher at South Panola High School in Batesville, Miss., echoed safety concerns with the job.

“Mentally, it’s challenging knowing that I am putting myself into a profession that traditionally is not something that would be putting myself in harm’s way,” she said. “Now, in the day and age we are in, I am taking that risk to educate our youth.”

An undergraduate at the University of Mississippi, Barnett says she already has an escape plan for an active-shooter incident, and she knows how she would protect her students. Barnett says that she has been told before by her education instructors that she “could get shot” in the job.

Kaylee Plowman, a junior integrated marketing and communications major from Nashville, says her hometown needs all the love and support it can receive due to the most recent school shooting. She says Nashville is a tight-knit community, and almost everyone is connected in some way to a victim of the shooting.

“This is our home; something must be done to protect our community and kids. Our Metro police have set the standard countrywide for fearlessly taking out the active shooter in record time,” Plowman said. “They saved countless lives, and we are so thankful to have them protecting us.”

In a blink of an eye, six lives are gone and Plowman and her community will continue to re- member them and their families in the wake of this tragedy.

“The three nine-year-old children should have gone home to their parents and been tucked into their beds. The headmaster, substitute teacher and custodian should have returned home to their families and had dinner together,” Plowman said. “Instead, there have been six funerals remembering the lives that were taken. Evelyn Dieckhaus, Hallie Scruggs, William Kinney, Katherine Koonce, Cynthia Peak and Mike Hill, you will not be forgotten.”

The tragic tornadoes that demolished portions of Amory and Rolling Fork, Miss., on March 24 left a memorable impression on countless University of Mississippi students.

Student organizations set up opportunities for fundraising, volunteering and donating all in the name of support for the citizens of the areas affected.

Individual Ole Miss students, such as Terrell Atkins, were directly affected by the catastrophe..

Born and raised in Amory, Atkins ventured over to Oxford in fall 2022 as a freshman at UM. Around seven months later, on March 24, Atkins was rushed to the basement of a frozen yogurt establishment on The Square as fractions of his hometown were being swept away.

“I was at Yaya’s, visiting a friend, and then the sirens went off. They told us to go to the basement,” Atkins said.

Atkins confessed that he was not initially concerned about the weather, as Amory frequently experiences unnerving weather with -