For Daina Kiela, the Red Flag Campaign hits close to home. 

The Women’s Resource Center launched the campaign Monday by having the Quad lined with small red flags, which represent red flags within abusive relationships.

The campaign marked the beginning of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, which takes place in April. 

Kiela, junior in LAS, said events like the Red Flag Campaign, a project by the Virginia Sexual and Domestic Violence Action Alliance, allow the campus to draw awareness to issues that are not normally addressed and to people who may not realize they are in an abusive relationship.

“I recently got out of a relationship two years ago,” said Kiela, outreach coordinator of the Illini Art Therapy Association. “It took something like this to make me realize that there actually had been emotional, controlling things going on — I had no idea — so it is very powerful. We kind of miss these red flags, these signs, that could potentially be verbal abuse, emotional abuse and sexual abuse going on in relationships.”

Statistics from the White House Council on Women and Girls show that nearly 22 million women and 1.6 million men have been sexually assaulted in their lifetime. One in five women will be assaulted in college. 

Molly McLay, assistant director of the Women’s Resource Center, said it is the University’s third year hosting the Red Flag Campaign.

“It’s an awareness campaign to address dating violence and try to prevent dating violence by educating people on the signs of abuse within relationships,” she said. “It also gives people the tools to intervene.”

This year, a large number of students have been involved in the process of planning the events for Sexual Assault Awareness month, McLay said. Kiela, along with other student volunteers, held signs educating bystanders about domestic violence.

Student volunteers and University staff members handed out information and encouraged students to sign a bystander pledge. They pledged to not commit or encourage violence and to support their loved ones, McLay said. They also pledged to intervene if they saw a red flag in their loved one’s relationships.

“When you see something, you can say something,” Patricia Ricketts, clinical counselor at the Counseling Center, said.

Ricketts is the coordinator of the women’s survivors group, a group for survivors of interpersonal violence at the Counseling Center. 

“It has been shown that campuses that bring (the Red Flag Campaign) to their campuses have greater bystander interventions,” she said. “There is actual research that supports that doing this campaign raises students’ awareness around these issues.”

McLay expressed that she wants to do whatever she can to end sexual assault, particularly on this campus. Sexual Assault Awareness Month, along with FYCare and the facilitator training class she is in charge of equip students with information that educate and provide ways to protect themselves and each other.

“Racism, sexism, ableism, these things all contribute to this rape culture that we live in. Seemingly little things such as making jokes about race or making sexist or racist comments, those are the things that chip away and allow larger forms of violence to continue,” she said. “If we don’t see each other as fully human and don’t have respect for all humans, then that excuses violence against some people.”

Sexual Assault Awareness month is co-chaired by McLay and Stephanie Ames, an advocate at Rape Advocacy, Counseling and Education Services. 

Ames mentioned the importance of being aware of the issues of sexual assault on campus for two particular reasons: to get people talking and to show support for survivors.

“It’s not really something we want to talk about, but we need to,” she said. “Violence strives in silence.” 

This year’s sexual assault awareness theme is “I Stand with survivors, I Stand against violence, I Stand to end rape culture.”

“We have FYCare workshops and things like that, but it’s only once whereas the month of April happens every year,” Kiela said.

Jessica can be reached at [email protected].