MSU Assistant Director of Health Promotion, Wellness and Sexual Assault Christina Gladney hangs a shirt at MSU's Clothesline Project Thursday. The event allowed students to paint shirts recognizing violence they, or others in their lives has suffered. The shirts were then displayed on a clothesline on the Drill Field. (Photo by Charlie Benton, SDN)
Shirts hang on the line at MSU's Clothesline Project Thursday. Students were given the opportunity to paint a shirt recognizing violence that they or others close to them were subject to. Each color shirt represented a different type of violence. (Photo by Charlie Benton, SDN)
Mississippi State University students had the opportunity to participate in the Clothesline Project, sharing their experiences overcoming violence, or those of a friend.
Students were able to paint a T-shirt and hang it on a line on a clothesline in honor of themselves or someone else who had experienced violence. Christina Gladney, MSU Assistant Director of Heath Promotion, Wellness and Sexual Assault said at least 100 students had participated on each of the three days the Clothesline Project was set up on campus. The project is an annual event for MSU, and is done on college campuses nationwide.
“The program is centered around students being able to speak out and express themselves about their own personal experiences with violence, or someone that they love,” Gladney said. Different colors of shirts denoted different types of violence experience, with yellow representing physical violence, pink, orange and red representing sexual assault and rape, green and blue representing child abuse, gray representing cyberbullying, black for violence regarding political injustice and purple for violence due to sexual orientation.
“They get to express themselves through art on the shirt, and we display the shirt on the drill field, and we add them to the collection after each year,” Gladney said. “We keep the shirts in the collection and add new shirts.”
The Clothesline Project originated in 1990 in Hyannis, Massachusetts, when a member of the Cape Cod Women’s Defense Agenda learned at least 51,000 women were killed due to domestic violence at the same time 58,000 men perished in the Vietnam War. The project’s mission is to educate students and the community that violence is a problem everywhere, but hope is still available. The project began with 31 shirts.
The MSU Clothesline Project is overseen by the MSU department of Health Promotion and Wellness.