Last Sunday marked Take Back the Night, a national initiative designed as a way of fighting back against the violence and sexual assault that make many places unsafe at night. Students marched throughout the five-college campus, joining together in chants against sexual assault. The march was the centerpiece of Take Back the Night; it was preceded by a rally and followed up by speakers.

Mikey Gaertner Students light candles during the five-college Take Back the Night march.

The event was the result of weeks of planning, according to Ariel Esterkin ’02, a member of the planning committee. The committee was comprised of 18 students as well as Health Educators Ty Ramsauer and Carla Jackson of the Health Education Outreach and Yoshiko Matsui, a Scripps Hall Director.

Esterkin explained that the committee had been working on Take Back the Night since the beginning of the semester, securing funding, researching the marching chants, designing the t-shirts, and planning the routes. She said that the group wanted to choose a route that incorporated as many places as possible, without being too long.

Take Back the Night occurs on college campuses across the country during the first week of March. According to Esterkin, there is no specific night on which all marches occur, although many colleges, the Claremont Colleges included, plan theirs on the fourth of the month.

The march has been passed from organization to organization over the years, but the HEO has participated for the past few years, explained Carla Jackson.

About 150 students participated in the march, about the same amount as last year, according to Jackson. She said that participation has been steady from year to year.

Esterkin was pleased with the attendance the event received, especially by the increase in attendance by Pomona students. She also mentioned that the crowd was more well-rounded in terms of gender. "We got good attendance and we got a more well-rounded attendance than last year. A lot of people who didn’t know in advance joined it," Esterkin said.