Harvard Graduates Wear Red Tape on Caps and Gowns to Silently Protest School's Sexual Assault Policies
ByAn activist group for undergraduate students at Harvard organized a silent protest for graduates at Thursday's commencement exercises to express objection for the school's policies on sexual assault.
According to the Huffington Post, some students graduating at Harvard University's commencement ceremony wore red tape on their caps and gowns. Organizing the silent protest was Our Harvard Can Do Better, a group that advocates for "Title IX enforcement" at Harvard.
Students at Columbia University held a similar demonstration, BuzzFeed reported, where the No Red Tape group encouraged graduates to put red tape on their caps and gowns as well. The group had used red tape previously to show solidarity for rape survivors and to advocate for reforms to the school's sexual assault policies.
Graduates at Brown University also wore red tape on their caps to read the roman numeral IX, to represent federal gender equity law Title IX.
"I have to watch my friends' rapist walk across the stage, that's something we have to fix," Michelle Maziar, co-founder of Harvard Students Demand Respect, a graduate student coalition also advocating for sexual assault policy reform at Harvard. "I hope this time next year we have a lot fewer rapists walking across the stage."
Harvard is one of 60 schools under federal investigation from the U.S. Education Department's Office of Civil Rights for Title IX/Clery Act complaints. The school started a task force to prevent sexual violence on campus with a website to collect testimonies from survivors.
"The task force offers this second option to ensure that they are not missing the important voices of individuals who wish to participate in this conversation without being identified," Harvard spokesman Jeff Neal told the HP. "We recognize information sharing, when authorized by a victim, may increase the effectiveness of service delivery, victim safety, and offender accountability. Submissions received confidentially will be collected and presented to the larger task force without identifying information."