As Sexual Assault Prevention Month approaches in April, Men Against Rape and Sexual Assault will be promoting its BannerUp campaign, MARS co-director Alec Raich said.
For the BannerUp campaign, Raich said MARS, a fraternity organization that promotes sexual assault prevention and education, will be making large red banners to promote sexual assault prevention on campus.
“We want to lower numbers of sexual assaults on campus,” Raich said.
Like in its similar campaign last semester, MARS is hoping to have one banner hung up in front of every fraternity house on campus, Raich said. He said he believes this will reach a larger demographic of people, especially since so many people attend Little 500.
“How many times do you see the same message across all greek houses on campus?” Raich said.
The BannerUp campaign will occur the same time as Culture of Care Week. Culture of Care promotes mental health, sexual health, drug and alcohol awareness and respect.
Culture of Care will be using the hashtag ”#CouragetoCare” throughout the week. MARS will also use this hashtag on the banners to promote Culture of Care Week, said Bill Phan, director of involvement for Culture of Care, as well as a director of MARS when BannerUp began.
Safe Sisters, a sorority organization that also promotes sexual assault prevention on campus, will be involved with the campaign by making banners and hanging them on sorority houses, Phan said.
However, if any owners of unhoused greek houses want a banner on one of the houses, they can have one.
Last semester, MARS began their BannerUp campaign in response to the controversial banners hung by fraternity houses at Old Dominion University in Virginia.
These banners included phrases like “Rowdy and Fun Hope Your Baby Girl Is Ready for a Good Time.”
“They were very degrading to women,” Phan said.
BannerUp was created to show that fraternities at Old Dominion and the general negative press of fraternities in the media are not good representations of greek life, Raich said.
“Yes, we want to have fun and have social events, but we also want to have fun while being safe,” Phan said.
MARS also started the campaign because of the significant amount of sexual assaults reported last semester, Phan said.
The large red banners MARS made in response last semester contained phrases like “Real Hoosier Men Should Respect Women” and “Join MARS for a Safer IU.”
While the BannerUp campaign will be very similar to the one last semester, Raich said it will feature different phrases, some that may even relate to Little 500.
Because not all sexual assaults happen to women, Phan said some of the banners will be gender-neutral. He said MARS wants to be inclusive to all genders for their campaign.
“In a lot of ways, this is a woman’s problem,” Phan said. “But in a lot of other ways, this is a man’s problem too because not enough of us are working together on this issue.”
MARS hopes to be able to do this campaign every year around the week of Little 500, Raich said.
Though MARS doesn’t have a plan for when they will be taking down the banners after hanging them, Raich said they will have them down before the end of the semester.
Raich said he is optimistic for this campaign and is excited to see how students will respond to it.
“To get this message across like this makes it very clear all over campus,” Raich said. “It shows a coherence and togetherness against this one issue across campus.”
