By Lucy Hubbard
Content warning, this article includes sensitive topics around sexual assault and harassment
Preventing Sexual Assault addressed the undressing alongside La Unidad Latina, Lambda Upsilon Lambda Fraternity during a discussion on Feb. 17, delving into indecent exposure, consent and stigmas impacting male victims of sexual assault.
The ‘Addressing the Undressing’ event, held at Adele H. Stamp Student Union, focused on the recent spike in indecent exposures on the University of Maryland’s campus. With the number of indecent exposures nearly tripling between 2021 and 2022, PSA and LULPhi felt it was important to address.
While indecent exposure is widely discussed on campus, according to PSA co-president Damiana Colley, it is not taken as seriously as it should be.
“I don’t think that they realize that the intent behind serious and usually prosecuted indecent exposure [is] meant to arouse or meant to traumatize a victim,” said the junior criminology and criminal justice and psychology major said. “So it’s kind of downplayed and not really seen as a form of sexual harassment.”
Indecent exposure is a broad term that takes on many forms. Most associate the term with a person purposely exposing their private parts in public. According to PSA, streaking, skinny dipping and having sex in public are also forms of indecent exposure.
“[People] don’t take it as seriously because you’re not being violent or like physically hurting someone,” said Anna Gerstein, PSA co-president and junior public policy major.
Along with the discussion on indecent exposure, PSA expressed their frequent message of consent and how to further prevent sexual assaults on campus. LULPhi’s recruitment and retention chair and junior information science major, Jonathan Ricci, said that their fraternity felt it was important to address these issues.
“We’re still a fraternity and a part of a system that still feeds into misogynistic and wrong ideas,” Ricci said.“As much as we want [to] say we don’t do anything, I still think it’s really important that we should say something about it and do something proactive.”
The event included conversations on the stigmas and misconceptions that impact male victims of sexual assault.
“This uncomfortable conversation needs to happen with everyone,” Ricci said. “So we can actually do something productive to move past this, to carry on and to better our campus.”
As a member of the only Latino fraternity on campus, Ricci felt it was important to address the issue of sexual assault within the Latino community because it is often overlooked.
“[Conversations about] sexual assault in general are conversations that are not held a lot in minority communities, especially in Latino ones,” Ricci said. “I’m happy that we had a good [turnout] from the Latino community in general.”
In the future, PSA hopes to expand their message beyond predominantly white Greek life, according to Colley. This includes reaching out to fraternities and sororities in the National Pan-Hellenic Council and Multicultural Greek Life Council.
“Decentralize Greek life is our goal,” Colley said. “That doesn’t mean we’re neglecting Greek life in any way, we’re reallocating our resources to cater to the diverse communities here.”
Sexual violence is an issue that transcends all genders, races and identities. For PSA, it is important that these events are held to normalize the topic of sexual violence and sexual harrassment for all individuals.
“Normalizing these conversations and letting people know that, no matter what you identify as, your gender or your race or your ethnicity, people do get sexually assaulted,” Gerstein said. “This isn’t just an issue that surrounds women.”
Featured Image: Anna Gerstein and Jonathan Ricci present during the Addressing the Undressing event in Adele H. Stamp Student Union on Feb. 17, 2023. Photo by Lucy Hubbard.