Code TEAL, an organization that aims to increase awareness about sexual assault, concludes its week of events Tuesday with a campus-wide forum at 11:30 a.m. in the Union Building ballroom.
Tuesday's forum will be moderated by Director of Student life, Dorian Shager. According to senior Code TEAL member Brittany Slate, the forum will highlight the role of consent in eliminating sexual assault and the societal constructs of rape culture.
Slate said she hopes that people who attend the event will gain a better understanding of cultural components that promote sexual assault. The goal is that this understanding will lead to future conversations about the link between culture and sexual assault.
"The organization is all about awareness," junior Code TEAL member Claire Zingraf said. "Before Code TEAL this was a conversation that happened behind closed doors or nowhere at all. Sexual assault does occur on this campus and it is something people should be talking about."
The organization began "tealing" campus on Monday, April 22, in an effort to increase awareness about the weeklong mission to start and keep a conversation about sexual awareness going.
"We 'tealed' the campus as a visual to get people to recognize that it was Code Teal week," Zingraf said.
Zingraf said she thought the most powerful event so far this week was the Code TEAL rally walk around campus on Friday.
Junior Code TEAL member Walker Chance agreed, calling the rally "moving and influential."
At the end of a walk around campus during the rally, participants gathered around a sheet sign covered in four negative phrases associated with sexual assault: coercion, rape culture, silence and victim blaming. A tray of teal paint sat in front of the sheet sign. Participants were asked to "teal out" the negative words by covering them with the paint and replacing them with positive comments.
"There were comments around the lines of: I'm covering victim blaming because I blamed myself, I'm covering silence because I wasn't silent and called public safety the other day and now I'm being victimized," Zingraf said. "After this, the sheet sign is going to be covered in positive words and hung in the hub as a way to promote the idea of sexual positivity."
Walker said that the symbolism of participants using their hands to "teal out," or paint over the negative words associated with rape was powerful for him.
"I think what really went well was the inter-workings of the members of code teal," Chance said. "Just working together to get everything done was great."
In the future, Zingraf hopes that Code TEAL can keep its momentum saying, "We just hope to keep the conversation going."
