A rally tonight concludes the 15th annual Sexual Assault and Relationship Violence Awareness (SARVA) Week, an event put on by the UW Committee Organizing Rape Education (CORE).

SARVA Week encourages the UW community to get involved, raise awareness and work together to bring an end to sexual assault.

The committee’s main goal is to promote awareness about sexual assault and relationship violence.

“It is an issue that people don’t know too much about,” said Jackie Mayer, CORE’s assistant director. “The press coverage that it does get usually isn’t necessarily positive.”

Media coverage of Rebecca Griego’s murder increased general safety awareness on campus and also raised issues concerning sexual violence. Griego was killed last April on campus by her ex-boyfriend.

“Since last year with the murder of Rebecca Griego, that raised awareness of sexual violence, there has been a larger university response,” said Melissa Tumas, Sexual Assault and Relationship Violence Information Service (SARIS) coordinator and CORE adviser.

CORE worked with SARIS — a confidential, anonymous and safe place for survivors and supporters — to organize events, visualizations and activities for this week. Across the campus, various exhibitions were displayed during the week.

The Silent Witness Exhibit, located in the HUB, contained silhouettes representing men and women who have lost their lives from sexual assault. Messages and responses to sexual assault and rape were displayed across T-shirts in the Quad, as part of the Clothesline Project.

One of the new events this year was the screening of Cruel and Unusual: Transgender Women in the Prison System, a documentary about transgender women incarcerated in men’s prisons. These women are denied medical and psychological treatment and are victims of rape and violence.

Sex Signals, an improvisational show from Chicago, examined gender misconceptions and stereotypes through humor. The show poked fun at the roles college students are expected to play in dating situations and demonstrates how this pressure contributes to acquaintance rape situations.

“A big problem with acquaintance rape, is that a lot of people who have been a victim of it don’t even recognize that they have been raped, or they don’t identify it as rape because it is such an under discussed topic,” said senior Lindsay Omta, the director of CORE.

The past two years SARVA Week has focused on breaking down gender stereotypes.

“There are endless misconceptions and stereotypes, one of them primarily being that it is a women’s issue,” Omta said. “The woman is always the victim and the man is the perpetrator.”

The event tonight will begin with speeches by the directors of CORE, followed by guest vocalists and a march from the HUB to Red Square. The night allows students, survivors and supporters to share their own experiences.

[Reach reporter Michelle Tanaka at news@thedaily.washington.edu.]