Students Protest Rape Awareness Program

COLLEGE PARK, Md. -- A 17-year-old tradition is causing some controversy at the University of Maryland.

For the past 17 years, students have participated in a rape awareness program where victims and advocates against sexual violence hang T-shirts along a huge clothesline on campus.

The program allows victims to turn their backs on the crime and have a voice. Some victims also write the names of their assailants on their shirts.

But this year, university lawyers are instructing participants not to write names on shirts to avoid potential lawsuits.

"Of course in a form of protest, we still are going to hang the shirts [with the names on them]," says Khalifah, a UMd. student and member of the Student Advocates for Education about Rape. "This is just another way we're silencing sexual assault victims."

The Student Advocates for Education about Rape group won't back down, Khalifah says.

"If it means we have to go 60s style and do a boycott, and that's perfectly okay too," she says.

Advocates plan to meet with university lawyers on Monday. Students will begin hanging the shirts on Oct. 11.

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