CWLU Herstory Blog

For the past 17 years, students at the University of Maryland have participated in a rape awareness program where victims and advocates against sexual violence hang T-shirts along a huge clothesline on campus. Some victims also write the names of their assailants on their shirts.

Now the university lawyers have jumped in and told the students not to put the names of their assailants on the shirts because of fear of lawsuits. Some observers have speculated this concern comes from the debacle of the Duke lacross players case that ended with all of the accused being absolved and the prosecutor losing his job.

"Of course in a form of protest, we still are going to hang the shirts [with the names on them]," says Khalifah, a UMd. student and member of the Student Advocates for Education about Rape. "This is just another way we're silencing sexual assault victims."

There is an active discussion of this over at Feministing .