By Christina Walker
After the student organization, Preventing Sexual Assault, canceled this semester’s Red Zone Rally, deeming it ‘inappropriate’ for the community’s mental climate, PSA said their future is focused on education.
“A lot of people wanted to bring awareness to mental health, which we believe is essential,” said Anna Gerstein, co-president of PSA. “There was a lot going on in the world, and there was also a lot going on in the UMD community.”
PSA’s Red Zone Rally, a three-hour-long march and protest around campus, was supposed to occur on Oct. 20. Due to rain, the rally was postponed to the following Friday. PSA officially canceled the event Thursday, Oct. 26.
The rally would have been an outlet for survivors of sexual violence to demand that the university acknowledge and support them, said Damiana Colley, co-president of PSA.
“A lot of those demands are just recognizing that there’s an issue,” Colley said. “The only way to help combat this issue is to acknowledge it, and to increase resources for students so they can actually be helped.”
Sexual assault and other relevant issues are hard topics to discuss and take a “massive toll” on students’ mental health, said Gerstein. The week of the rally, PSA’s executive board decided these conversations were potentially harmful to students; they instead needed their space to heal in the midst of tragedy.
“We did what we thought was best for the campus community,” said Colley.
Colley said their organization does a lot to address mental health. PSA fosters connections with UMD’s counseling center, the health center, and the Office of Civil Rights and Sexual Misconduct.
“Incidents relating to sexual assault often coincide with consequences, negative consequences, of mental health,” Colley said.
PSA recently enacted a mental health chair on their board, Gerstein said. Ensuring students have access to necessary resources means student organizations have gone the extra mile to make themselves a resource for the community.
Colley said the University of Maryland has a lot of resources for students struggling with mental health, but their implementation of these resources is not always effective and accessible for students.
“They have the resources that we’re looking for,” Colley said. “They need to be capitalized on, and we need to see more clarity with more actual help being offered.”
Allie Moraglia, a sophomore economics major, said UMD has many mental health resources but fails to adequately advertise them. Moraglia admitted she was also not aware of any campus resources related to sexual violence, except the organizations run by students.
“They don’t publicize [resources] enough until after a tragedy,” Moraglia said.
Now, PSA is focused on their future events and the education of the UMD community and the community surrounding it.
“Sexual assault is a really hard issue to tackle,” Gerstein said. “We just want to normalize that conversation.”
PSA said they are doing more educational lectures during UMD classes, and also visiting local high schools to conduct consent summits. Education means they can stomp out sexual assault at the root, Gerstein said, instead of responding to incidents.
The goal is to be a safe space for all survivors to cope with issues in the aftermath of sexual assault, said Gerstein. The organization currently has almost 200 ambassadors and more than 30 executive board members.
“We’re not talking about just an issue that affects white women, but we’re talking about an issue that affects people all over the globe,” Gerstein said.
Gerstein said she wants students to feel welcomed and safe while interacting with PSA. Their goal over the next year is to educate and diversify.
“We want to act as an organization that students feel like they can come to for support,” Gerstein said.
Featured image: Students light candles in memory of sexual assault survivors who have died, dotting the McKeldin Mall fountain during PSA’s Occupy McKeldin in April 2022. Photo by Joel Lev-Tov.