Take Back the Night – Sincere Solidarity or Pushed Participation?

At this year’s Take Back the Night, the call to stand with survivors came with a challenge; continue that solidarity beyond the night. Through speeches and a march, the StFX community gathered to oppose sexual violence and consider their role in prevention.

Held alongside Sisters in Spirit, the gathering honoured missing and murdered Indigenous women, girls, and Two-Spirit people. Opening remarks recognized the connections between violence and colonialism, racism, and systems of power that have failed to protect Indigenous people. [1] 

Organizers emphasized that Take Back the Night was not held in response to the Homecoming controversy or recent media coverage. However, several interviewees connected the larger turnout to renewed attention to sexual violence prevention. The gathering of students, faculty, and community members was encouraging, but raised questions about what brings people into advocacy and how to keep the community together after attention fades.

Prevention is a shared responsibility. People should not have to structure their lives around avoiding assault. The speakers made it clear – we must challenge the idea that simply being at the event deserves a pat on the back. We must go beyond the event and keep the conversation going, including in the spaces where harmful comments may go unchallenged.

Students I interviewed acknowledged the importance of seeing their peers taking a public stand. “It’s great to be out here to see all these people that are out here willing to take a stand against this sort of behaviour on our campus,” said Rylan DeCoste, a second-year student.

Similarly, Jaxon Gomez, a third-year student, supported student advocacy efforts, but emphasized the institution’s responsibility. “I definitely think in terms of change a lot more needs to be done in terms of the academic setting with the professors and the actual school,” said Gomez.

Fourth-year student Alvin Udo further emphasized the need for continuation. “These are the young people that are gonna be growing up to be raising the children that might do it again. So, if we keep doing these things among the students, hopefully things change over time.”

This need for continuation raises an important question: How do we get students to participate?

Some students attended with the opportunity to receive academic credit. Heather Blackburn, StFX’s Sexual Violence Prevention and Response Advocate, described volunteer opportunities available to Service Learning students. “So a lot of those Service Learning students,  we give them options to sign up for, and in the past we haven’t had that much engagement,” said Blackburn. “So, we always need volunteers to support the poster making event. We always need volunteers to support with safety marshalling, and we would love to have more volunteers to help lead our chants and to keep the group more together.”

The StFX Service Learning website (which can be found here: https://www.stfx.ca/programs-courses/programs/service-learning) describes the program as an opportunity to “… help us to recognize the value of community and the small things that each one of us can do to help build a global community.” However, connecting these attempts at community-building to academic achievement raised concerns about sincerity.

“I think it defeats the purpose of doing it, because advocacy is supposed to be for change, not for a class credit,” said Gomez. “And if you’re going just for the class credit, then you don’t actually care about the change.”

But does one’s reason for showing up determine what they leave with?

Some saw both strengths and weaknesses. “The strength of that is it incentivizes people to go and learn about what’s actually going on and try to become advocates themselves,” said second year student Tommy LeBeau. “The downside of that, some of it may not be sincere to begin with, but it could cause some people to become sincere later. It’s not guaranteed though.”

Blackburn further emphasized the challenge of reaching students who aren’t already engaged in prevention. “Often in sexual violence prevention work, it kind of feels like we’re always preaching to the choir. Like the folks that come to the events are not the folks that need to hear the lesson,” said Blackburn. “So offering an incentive for some to participate, we could be opening the eyes and ears of folks that would otherwise maybe not hear and maybe not be impacted.”

Both perspectives matter. We should question whether academic incentives encourage meaningful engagement, but we should also recognize the strength in bringing people into conversations they may avoid otherwise. Showing up for a grade doesn’t mean someone will leave without learning.

For me, the concern is whether participation ends when the credit is received. We need students to take these conversations beyond an assignment and into their relationships with others and the community.

An incentive can bring someone to Take Back the Night, but how can we ensure they do their part to keep those nights safe?