April is Sexual Assault Awareness Month at Sacramento State and clubs and organizations are creating on-campus events to bring awareness to the college community.

The Clothesline Project, brought to campus on Wednesday through a partnership with the Student Health Center, Women’s Resource Center and Women Escaping a Violent Environment, exhibited T-shirts with messages and violent accounts written on them.

“This is a group of shirts that has been collected over the past 15 years and travels throughout the tri-county area,” said Jessica Heskin, victims advocate for Violence and Sexual Assault Services.

Heskin, coordinator for the Clothesline Project, said in addition to the shirts on display, students and people passing by wrote messages for survivors on little baby rocks. The rocks will be donated to WEAVE for a rock garden to be placed outside the WEAVE building located in downtown Sacramento.

The rock garden idea came from a sexual assault counselor at WEAVE who had a group of victims decorate large rocks with messages about their experiences, said Amber Brown, WEAVE prevention education manager.

The baby rocks were decorated with encouraging messages and will be given to sexual assault victims as a symbol of support from the community.

“There’s a big feeling of being alone for sexual assault victims and I hope this gives people courage,” Brown said. “This show’s hope, perseverance and faith in one another, and that’s a powerful message.”

Associated Students Inc. also came together to create its own version of the Clothesline Project, which it is holding as a weeklong event in the University Union.

“The Clothesline Project is done throughout the nation and we thought it would be good to create our own version here at Sac State,” said Ashley Skaggs, coordinator for ASI’s Clothesline Project.

ASI has a table set up in the Union with plain white T-shirts for students and faculty to decorate with messages. Some of the first shirts are already on display and carry messages like “Hit yourself, does it hurt?”

Skaggs says they plan to store the shirts until next year’s event. Her goal for the Clothesline Project is to make it bigger every year and to become a tradition for ASI and Sac State.

For more information about Sexual Assault Awareness Month, contact Jessica Heskin at (916) 278-3799. For information on ASI’s Clothesline Project, contact Ashley Skaggs at [email protected].

Isela Reyes can be reached at [email protected].