Mira Costa students rallyagainst sexual violence
Mira Costa High School students made an art installation last Wednesday for Denim Day, an effort to bring greater awareness to sexual violence. Photo by Megan Locklear
In 1992, an 18-year-old female student in Italy was raped by her 45-year-old male driving instructor, who was arrested and convicted but eventually set free when Italian Supreme Court ruled that what the woman was wearing — denim jeans — implied sexual consent.
Twenty-seven years later and six thousand miles away, the incident still resonates. Students at Mira Costa High School last Wednesday participated in Denim Day, an event organized by a non-profit called Peace Over Violence that takes place simultaneously at school campuses around the world as part of Sexual Assault Awareness Month. The vast majority of MCHS students wore denim and several collaborated on an art installation on campus consisting of a banner of denim jean pockets knit with various messages: “Believe Her,” “Finish the Fight,” “Me Too,” and “Rape Culture Ends with Me.”
The MBUSD Board of Education sanctioned Mira Costa’s Denim Day last month, but it was spearheaded by two student leaders, Allie Smythe and Megan Garringer. Smythe first got the school board’s attention last November with a strongly worded letter that urged a remaking of Costa’s campus culture, which was roiled at the time by allegations of sexual assault against a male student. Some students at the time said the incident was indicative of a male-dominated campus in which female students did not feel safe.
“I personally have never felt safe at this school,” senior Kailie Macauley said at the time in an Easy Reader story. “That’s just my experience here… Guys catcalling, doing stuff like that on campus. I just never felt truly safe. And the administration has never done anything about it.”
In her letter, Smythe was critical of the administration’s tight-lipped handling of the allegation and suggested it was part of a larger problem in which the safety of the school’s female students was not prioritized. Garringer wrote about Smythe’s activism in La Vista, the MCHS student newspaper, and eventually, the pair became part of the school’s Healthy Relationship committee. Denim Day is the first of several events, and even curriculum changes, resulting from the students’ initiative.
At its April 17 meeting, the MBUSD Board of Education issued a resolution in support of the event which noted that “misconceptions and misinformation about sexual violence” still abound in society, with terrible consequences.
“Every two minutes, someone in America is sexually assaulted,” the resolution said. “Approximately 1-in-5 women are raped during their lifetime and youth under 18 accounts for about 44 percent of all reported, at least 25 percent of women experience sexual harassment in the workplace, about 75 percent of harassment victims experience retaliation when they reported it.”
MCHS Principal Ben Dale applauded the results of the student’s activism, of which he said Denim Day is only a beginning.
“As a father and a principal I was so proud of our student leaders who initiated Denim Day, bringing awareness to students on our campus and all of the South Bay,” Dale said. “It was a great day for Costa.”
Dale said that a series of orientation meetings would take place on the very first day of school next fall focusing on healthy relationships, inclusion, school rules, and school spirit.
“We will bring in professionals, experts, and clinicians from Beach Cities Health District, The LA County Office of Education and MBPD to assist us and ensure we put the best research-based expertise in front of the students,” he said. “As a result, we hope our students will be more kind, more globally aware and more responsible as students.”
Assistant Superintendent Megan Locklear said that societal change of the scale necessary to solve the problem of rampant sexual assault begins with small steps, such as events like Denim Day, that simply raise awareness.
“I think it starts empowering our students to know that they have a voice, and that it is important,” she said. “They have a right to give consent or not give consent. It gives all our students awareness, also, that we are looking out for them at MBUSD not just academically, but socially and emotionally as well — that this is just as important. And hopefully, it gives someone who has been a victim of sexual assault knowledge that they can start talking to somebody about it.”