"Join together, free our lives, we will not be victimized" and "2-4-6-8, No more violence, No more rape" were just two of the chants heard along Mill Avenue Monday night part of Take Back the Night 2007.
ASU Home Safe sponsored the event, which aimed to raise awareness about sexual assault.
People eating at restaurants like PF Changs and My Big Fat Greek Restaurant stopped their meals to watch about 20 ASU students and volunteers carrying signs like "We are reclaiming the night."
Film senior Kim Lee stood in front of Harkins Art Theatre and smiled when the Take Back the Night crowd walked by.
"I am all about supporting women," Lee said.
The movement began in the mid-1970s as an opportunity for victims of sexual assault to take back the night, said psychology senior and Back the Night .
The march's concept is that victims of sexual assault can claim back the night for themselves.
"The night is just as much [the victim's] as it is anyone else's," Williams said.
However, most sexual assaults do not occur at night by a stranger the victim does not know.
"The reality is 84 to 95 percent [of the perpetrators] are an acquaintance of the victim," Williams said.
The event began on Palo Verde Beach with several information booths including wooden red and black figures that represented real individual victim's accounts of sexual violence, Williams said.
T-shirts hung from a clothesline with written messages from the victim or the victim's family and friends expressing their feelings about the assault.
"It's very cathartic for the [victims] to express themselves and can be a turning point in the healing process," said Kathy Curtis, Empact clinical coordinator.
Some students walking by the information booths stopped with solemn faces as they read some of the messages such as "You did not break me," "It shouldn't hurt to be loved" and "We are stronger than what you did to us."
Although there were about 75 T-shirts on display, one out of 20 college students were victims of a sexual assault or an attempted assault last year alone, said Dena Hester, ASU Home Safe.
But, according to ASU Police statistics, there were only 10 reported sexual assaults on the Tempe Campus in 2005, which leaves the majority of assaults left unreported, Hester said.
Many times the victim is blamed in a sexual assault case or doesn't recognize it as a crime when it's committed by an acquaintance instead of a stranger and therefore the victim remain silent, Hester said.
"We need to break the silence around sexual violence," Hester said.
ASU Police Commander Jim Hardina spoke to the crowd about his experience as a detective covering sexual assaults.
"One in four women will be a victim of sexual violence before they graduate," Hardina said. "If one in four backpacks were stolen or one in four cars were [broken into], that would be unacceptable."
Hardina said the way people think about sexual violence needs to change.
Greg Smith, an art major who graduated in December, who marched with the group of mostly women on Mill Avenue, said he sexual assault is society's problem, not just a problem for women.
"I think it's just as important for men to do whatever we can to help raise awareness of the issue," Smith said
Reach the reporter at: jeffrey.mitchell@asu.edu.
