About 50 participants marched across campus last Wednesday at the second annual Take Back the Night event in an effort to shout out against sexual violence and educate women about sexual assault.

The turnout was lower than expected, Patricia Grady, the Women’s Resource Center director, said. She said there was a lack of communication in regard to the location of the event. Due to the ASI elections at the same time, Take Back the Night was forced to move to another location that was not within a certain number of yards of the voting polls. Many students showed up in the library quad, but left because they couldn’t find the rally, which was moved to the dining commons lawn.

Activists and students gathered around 6:30p.m., to listen to keynote speakers Michelle Matisons and Ghada Masri talk about the power structure in our society and the elements of fear that women live in. Both women are professors of Women?s Studies at Sacramento State.

“Fear, we live in fear. We have this heightened level of adrenaline that men don’t have,” Masri said, speaking about the ways women are conditioned through societal norms.

Issues of racial identity, right wing vs. left wing, gender differences and sexual preferences were all subjects the speakers touched upon with regard to women.

Janay Lovering, a student, also spoke at the event. She read a poem about ?the forced-upon violence of so many women who have fear to speak out,? she said. Lovering spoke on behalf of women who have had violence directed toward them and discussed her rape.

The purpose of the event is “to speak out against sexual violence toward women and to get our voices heard,” Jackie Ray, graduate student and president of the CSUS chapter of the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance, said.

Midge Merino and the Women’s Resource Center’s administrative assistant Lemar Vaughn conducted a self-defense demonstration for the participants, showing women how to escape being physically threatened through basic Judo techniques.

During the demonstrations, students walked by to check out the scene. Students were seen peeking out dorm windows and standing against trees in the background to see what was happening from a distance. At one point, a group of college guys walked by and made lewd gestures at the crowd, but they were ignored.

The police even showed up to ensure the safety of the women and the event, they said.

The march lasted from about 8 p.m. until shortly before 9 p.m.

Women carried balloons, banners and homemade signs. “Yes means yes, no means no, whatever we wear, wherever we go,” one sign read.

Two men joined the march this year, but a larger turnout is hoped for next year, Grady said.

Take Back the Night is an event that is celebrated by women worldwide and that takes place annually on April 30, which is National Activism Day.