A field full of flags, a campus full of stories.
Last week on Oct. 11-12, the Outreach and Advocacy: Sexuality Information for Students Program (OASIS) put together the Red Flag Campaign at East Tennessee State University.
The Red Flag Campaign is an international campaign across college campuses throughout America, and this is the seventh year that the campaign has been held at ETSU.
The campaign was set up on the lawn outside of the D.P. Culp University Center full of red flags to bring awareness to relationship and sexual violence.
“One in three college students have experienced previously or are currently experiencing relationship violence of some kind and to some degree,” said Senior Counselor/OASIS Coordinator Counseling Center Kate Emmerich. “And a lot of people do not know what it actually looks like because we think of violence as only physicalm so a lot of the times when people are in these situations, they don’t think that the relationship that they are in is unhealthy or abusive until it becomes physical.”
Emmerich continued to discuss other forms of abuse in a relationship.
“But the reality is that there are all of these emotional and psychological components that come before that. It’s about educating students about what they can look for in their own relationships and also what to say and do if they suspect that someone who they know and care about is in an unhealthy relationship.”
Each day students were able to stop by the campaign booth in the Cave to write the “red flags” they see in relationship or sexual violence on their flag and place them on the ground on the lawn behind the Amphitheatre.
“One flag in a big green field may not look like much, but when you put it all together, it really shows you the bigger picture of what a violent relationship ends up looking like over time,” Emmerich said.
