Why we’re breaking our silence with the Hands of Harvard campaign

A new photo series

Hands of harvard

April is Harvard’s Sexual Assault Awareness Month. This month is dedicated to opening up the discourse pertinent ideas such as assault, violence, sex, sexuality, gender, gender identification, relationships, and so on. Because of my support for SAAM and for opening the pathways to these discussions in general, I have dedicated the next three weeks of my student life here to exploring Harvard students’ views on (and personal experiences with) the matters of sex, sexuality and gender. Although Harvard has made great steps forwards with the help and guidance of programming such as SHARC, CARE and OSAPR, Harvard students are not engaging with these ideas enough on a daily basis.

For the next three weeks, until the end of April, I will post one personal testimony from a person at Harvard each day. These people range from students to administrators to general staff. Each story will be accompanied with a picture of the student’s/faculty member’s/administrator’s hand or feet. Hands and feet are less gendered parts of the human body and will show the profile of my interviewees overall without exposing their identities.

Each story will be opened with a disclaimer that the ideas being presented are 1) personal, 2) true for the person who spoke them. 3) unadulterated, 4) possibly a trigger for trauma survivors. I do not control the ideas that my interviewees present to me thus I cannot censor or choose their ideas. I will sometimes include more challenging themes such as assault and violence on campus; however, this is not the focus of my series. The ideas that will be explored can be intimate and controversial so the disclaimer is there to protect everyone involved in reading these pieces.

Read the first one here.

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