Across from the blue booths in Fellow’s Garden stood over 100 mini purple flags — each of which represent a certain number of Brandeis students who have disclosed that they’ve been impacted by domestic violence, in accordance with the most recently conducted campus climate surveys in 2019 and 2022. The Prevention, Advocacy, and Resource Center set up the flag display to stand in solidarity with survivors of domestic abuse on the nationally recognized Purple Thursday.

In an Oct. 11 Instagram post, PARC wrote, “October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month, a time to acknowledge and honor the experiences of those impacted by domestic violence.” Congress passed the legislation that officially designated October Domestic Violence Awareness Month in 1989. Over time, the third Thursday of October has come to be known nationally as Purple Thursday, for which people around the country wear purple to raise awareness about signs of abuse, uplift the stories of survivors, and advocate for larger policy reform. 

This year, people around the country observed Purple Thursday on Oct. 19. To prevent the perpetuation of relationship abuse, PARC encouraged students to fill out tags with values related to healthy relationships, such as humor, trust, humility, honesty, and communication. They then attached the tags to purple flowers, which people could “give to a friend, romantic partner, or themself and get the conversation started,” explained Rebecca Van Spall-Hood, violence prevention specialist and survivor advocate, in an Oct. 19 interview with the Justice.

The 2022 campus climate survey found that of the Brandeis undergraduate and graduate student participants, approximately 11% reported that they have been in a relationship that was controlling or abusive physically, sexually, psychologically, emotionally, or financially.

The National Domestic Violence Hotline found that 69% of female survivors and 53% of male survivors of rape, physical violence, or stalking by an intimate partner had their first experience with relationship violence before the age of 25. Additionally, 43% of dating college women report experiencing violent and abusive behaviors, and 52% of college women report knowing a friend who has experienced violent and abusive dating behaviors. These behaviors range from digital and verbal abuse to physical and sexual abuse. 

“Relationship violence remains a prevalent issue for college students, and Brandeis students are not immune from this issue,” said Kate Richey, the director of PARC, in an Oct. 19 email to the Justice.

PARC invited Brandeis community members to wear purple on Oct. 19 to start “the wider conversation of ‘How do we support folks experiencing domestic violence? How do we end domestic violence?’” Van Spall-Hood explained. 

Purple has long been connected with the domestic violence awareness movement. The association between the color purple and abuse advocacy is rooted in the significance of the color during the women’s suffrage movement. Since purple, white, and gold were the official colors of the National Women’s Party, many suffragettes often wore those colors as they advocated for their cause. During a march in Washington D.C. in 1978 in support of equal rights, more than 100,000 women wore purple to demonstrate their solidarity as well as to draw visual attention to their demonstration through a purple uniformity.

On their Instagram, PARC wrote, “We would like to recognize the gendered history of the domestic and sexual violence movement and reaffirm that individuals of all genders and sexual orientations are impacted by this violence.”

The National Institutes of Health estimates that as many as one in four women and one in nine men are survivors of domestic violence. They also predict that family and domestic violence affects 10 million people in the United States every year.

Furthermore, the National Coalition Against Domestic Violence calculates that one in three women and one in four men have experienced some form of physical violence by an intimate partner. However, this estimate includes a range of behaviors such as slapping, shoving, and pushing that “in some cases might not be considered ‘domestic violence.’” The NCADV also finds that one in seven women and one in 25 men have been injured by an intimate partner.

Domestic violence is proven to have intensified during the pandemic, the United Nations reports.

According to the NIH, domestic violence is a “social and public health crisis, crossing lines of class, race, ethnicity, and sexuality.” The NIH also states that “there are many forms of domestic abuse which can be verbal, emotional, and/or physical, and it’s important to understand how these behaviors interact so that you know where to ask for help.”

To support survivors of domestic violence, PARC offers a wide variety of resources. “Primarily, we have advocacy, so folks can make appointments with both professional staff and peer advocates to talk about a range of experiences,” explained Van Spall-Hood. “We’re also a resource center, so we can connect people to community resources and on-campus resources. We can walk folks through difficult situations depending on what the scenario is. The other half of PARC is violence prevention. We have conversations with the Brandeis community about consent, active bystandership, prosocial bystandership, and a range of many other things.”

In her email, Richey stated that PARC has added new content about healthy and unhealthy relationships to the Health, Wellness, and Life Skills requirement for first-year students. “We encourage returning students to partner with PARC for ongoing education; our violence prevention educators can come to individual student groups and speak about healthy relationships (along with bystander intervention and consent),” she wrote.

Richey also explained that PARC is collaborating with the Office of Equal Opportunity and the Office of Institutional Research to facilitate the next campus survey to be distributed next spring. “I am very hopeful that we’ll have strong student participation in this year’s survey which will give us a more comprehensive look at the current student experience,” she wrote. “Students’ experiences in relationships in 2022 were still quite impacted by virtual learning throughout the pandemic.”

“The more students that take this survey, the better we can use those statistics to support people,” Van Spall-Hood said. “We use those statistics when we train peer advocates, and it makes it tangible to understand this happens on Brandeis’ campus and many other campuses across the nation.”

Once PARC analyzes the data, they will report their findings and host workshops about the collected data for students to ask any questions or express any concerns they may have.