The University Panhellenic Council (UPC) hosted their second “Take Back the Night” event in Gottesman last Thursday night in order to bring awareness to sexual violence at Pace.

Former programing chair of UPC Maria Lane and former Associate Director for Greek Life & Leadership Robert Thomas Jones started this event last year. UPC is made up of the social sororities Delta Phi Epsilon, Phi Sigma Sigma, Nu Zeta Phi, Sigma Iota Chi, and Alpha Lambda Sigma.

This event was not targeted towards any one group, since sexual violence can happen to anyone, according to the organizers.

“The [purpose of the] whole night is to have a discussion [on] all forms of sexual assault and [domestic] violence. It’s not pertaining to one gender, it’s a conversation about all genders, ethnicities, sexual preferences, and races. Everyone is included in this conversation because it could happen to anyone,” Lane said.

Attendees were given note cards where they wrote down stories of sexual violence that happened to themselves or someone they know, and then read them out loud.

Some of the messages read “cat calling in the streets,” “a patient I had wouldn’t take his meds unless I gave him a kiss,” and “my sister was almost raped when she was three.”

Students then pledged not to commit or condone sexual violence of any kind, and challenged others to speak out.

Participants also wrote down messages of support on a banner. Some of these messages read “shatter the silence, stop the violence,” “no means no!” and “love yourself.”

Assistant Director of Multicultural Affairs & Diversity Programs (MADP) and LGBTQQ Coordinator Rachael Simon then told students about the confidential resources they had available to them, which include Campus Chaplain Sister Susan Becker, the Counseling Center, and University Health Care.

Attendees marched around Choate Pond carrying the banner and shouting the same messages of support they wrote on the banner.

Pace’s Sexual Assault and Education Specialist Mary Breen has found that Pace has stricter definitions of what sexual violence is than the rest of world.

“[What constitutes sexual assault at Pace] is ‘yes means yes,’ so instead of ‘no means no,’ which can indicate that someone is already in the situation of having to resist, only ‘yes’ means ‘yes,’ therefore it’s considered unwanted sexual advances if consent hasn’t been given every step of the way,” Breen said.

However, Breen has also found that many students did not know about the resources available to them, and wish they had known about them sooner.

“I’ve had a lot of students say to me ‘now I know where to go, where to tell my friends to go, now I’m going to tell so and so to go,’” Breen said.

It took Breen around three weeks to deal with her first incident of sexual violence at Pace, and she found that sexual assaults are often under reported.

Statistics for Domestic Violence at Pace for the years 2012 through 2014 are available in Pace’s Health and Fire safety report for 2015. There were six instances of rape in 2014, one of aggravated assault in 2012, and one instance of dating violence in 2014.