Colored T-shirts will be displayed on campus to help bring awareness about violence against women today and Tuesday.

The displayed T-shirts are part of the Clothesline Project sponsored by Eastern’s Gender Diversity Coalition.

Tara Crawford, the vice president of the Gender Diversity Coalition and a senior psychology major, said the coalition will display 70 T-shirts that will be wrapped around trees on the South Quad.

She said she hopes students will feel shocked and angry that so many students on Eastern’s campus have been abused.

“I want them to feel what these women have gone through,” Crawford said.

Ashley Wiberg, the secretary of the coalition and a senior secondary education major, said one out of seven women in college will be assaulted by the end of their college careers. Wiberg said she hopes the project will touch someone that has been abused and will influence them to speak out.

The National Clothes Line Project began in Massachusetts in 1990 as a public display of colored T-shirts hung on clotheslines to represent a particular individual’s experience, according to a press release issued by the women’s studies program.

Wiberg said she is not sure how students will react to the project, but she hopes the project will help educate students.

The coalition will be wearing pins and will be standing by the T-shirts if any students have questions about the project, Crawford said.

The coalition is organizing the Clothes Line project for Sexual Assault Awareness Month and this is the first time the project has been offered on Eastern’s campus.

Each color of T-shits represents a different type of abuse, Wiberg said.

White represents women who died because of violence, yellow/beige represents women who were battered or assaulted, red/pink/orange represents women who are survivors of rape and sexual assault, blue/green represents survivors of incest and sexual abuse, purple/lavender represents women attacked because of their sexual orientation and black represents women attacked for political reasons.

The T-shirts will be tied around trees on South Quad today and Tuesday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.

Elizabeth Edwards can be reached at 581-2812 or eaedwards@eiu.edu.

Tara Crawford, a senior psychology major, hangs up a shirt she made to support The National Clothesline Project sponsored by The Gender Coalition.(Audrey Sawyer

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