Take Back the Night

Penis-shaped cookies in hand, members of Columbia and Barnard’s Take Back the Night spent Wednesday afternoon tabling outside of Lehman Library as part of their 2008 version of the sex-positive festival Sexibition. “We wanted to promote a culture where sex can be talked about openly,” coordinator Robin Broder, BC ’09, said.

Reverberating in the spaces of Barnard LeFrak Gym’s sprawling ceiling and through the open streets of New York City, the voices of survivors of sexual violence and their allies spoke individually and cohesively against assault. Organizers estimated about 500 students marched in Thursday’s Take Back the Night, tracing a serpentine path through Morningside Heights.

Tonight, retiring Barnard political theory professor Dennis Dalton will march in the anti-violence demonstration Take Back the Night for the last time after more than a decade of involvement, a farewell he discusses with teary eyes. But this year, he will participate in the march’s entire duration—something that he and all other men were not previously allowed to do.