I’ve been waiting for this for two whole years.

My friend and I ran to the quad, only to find that we were too late to make clever signs. In fact, the group started to march, so we slunk to the back and took a second to take in the mix of Amnesty International, the Women’s Resource Center, Advocates for Choice and other allies. We looked somewhat odd in our non-provocative, totally-safe-for-work clothing, but that didn’t stop me from yelling out some chants like “The way we dress is not a yes” and (my favorite) “2, 4, 6, 8, teach the rapists not to rape.” 

After all, this was SlutWalk 2013. I was in the midst of the protest march that started in Toronto in 2011, the protest march against slut shaming and victim blaming in rape cases. I couldn’t truly participate without some chanting. 

We marched down Green Street and turned left on Fourth Street, all the while being photographed and stared at intently. At first, I just basked in the glow of being in the crowd. I had missed the 2011 and 2012 SlutWalk in Chicago, and it was my dream to participate. 

But after my ten minutes of grinning ear to ear and screaming at the top of my lungs about consent, I started to realize that some viewers just weren’t interested. They looked bored, or annoyed that yet another group of people were screaming about sexual assault. Which is unfortunate because it’s something we’ll continue to scream about. 

We live in a society that is immersed in a rape culture. In Steubenville, Ohio, two football players sexually assaulted a teenage girl — and we place blame on the girl for getting too drunk. In Notre Dame, Indiana, a rape victim attending Saint Mary’s College killed herself after being threatened by her attackers not to do anything she would regret — while the police waited five days after her suicide to interview the accused. At the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a student reported being raped last year and is now facing an honor code violation for creating an “intimidating environment” for her alleged rapist. And for all these highly-publicized incidents, there are probably tons more that occur in different towns.

As my favorite chant suggests, we need to place blame off victims and on to perpetrators. We need to stand up and yell at our friends when they get too handsy at the bar because someone is wearing something provocative. We need to take classes that actually try to address consent — classes like FYCARE — much more seriously, and develop more educational courses that talk less about how not to be raped and more on why it’s wrong to do anything sexual with a girl without that hard, concrete “yes.” 

The reason that SlutWalk is, in my eyes, effective is because it’s one of the few protests that puts shame on the rapists. Dressing up in knee-high fishnets may seem ridiculous to you, but the message is simple: anyone should be able to dress, act or be anything they want because sexual consent doesn’t come from how you’re dressed or how many shots you’ve had. 

But although the support on Thursday was wonderful, we need to amp it up. Sexual assault shouldn’t only be the concern of women’s centers or human rights groups. More students, teachers and administrators should come along, ready to support the idea of shifting blame and stopping sexual assault. This issue isn’t just for victims or women. It affects everyone. If it takes you two minutes to skim over my whole column, by the end of it, someone in the United States has been sexually assaulted. Just yesterday morning, there was an attempted sexual assault in Allen Hall. In a residence hall. Anyone that thinks the issue of sexual assault is over-reported and doesn’t affect their community has got to be kidding. 

At the end of the march, I had the opportunity to quickly talk to Elizabeth Mucha, one of the Amnesty International leaders.

“Someone brought up the idea on working on a campaign teaching rapists not to rape,” she said. “Amnesty doesn’t really focus on it, but we were passionate against victim blaming. It just kinda snowballed from here.” 

Her legs were covered in sharpie-written tick-marks, starting with “whore” on her thigh, all the way down to “matronly” below her knee. She says she’s had experiences where if she wore long skirts, people would tell her that she looked “like their grandmothers” but if she sported a mini, people would ask if “that was appropriate to wear out.” 

“We’re damned if we do,” said Mucha, “and we’re damned if we don’t.” 

This is the truth, not only about the length of our skirts, but about the fight against sexual assault. So we might as well protest instead of keeping quiet.

Tolu is a senior in Media. She can be reached at [email protected].