Standing together
St. Francis Xavier athletes support with sex assault survivors
Some female athletes at St. Francis Xavier University have come up with a remarkable response to sex charges against members of the varsity football team.
Soccer players have launched a solidarity campaign with sexual assault survivors, quelling a potential backlash that experts say can sometimes rise in the wake of damning allegations against powerful, popular male students on university campuses.
Sarah Bruce, a second-year student on the X-Women soccer team, says she launched the campaign, called We Stand Together, to channel her anger and spark social change on campus. She designed a logo with the Antigonish, N.S., university’s well-known X on top of a pink circle and the words “end sexual violence,” which has been widely shared on social media and is now featured on stickers, pins and t-shirts.
Fellow teammate Emma Kuzmyk, a first-year student and goalkeeper on the women’s soccer team, created a poem and harrowing video calling attention to sexual assaults on university campuses.
Late last month, police charged two defensive backs on the X-Men varsity football team with sexual assault. RCMP said Jonah Williams, 19, was charged with three counts of sexual assault, while Tyler Ball, 18, was charged with one count of sexual assault.
The allegations first came to light after an 18-year-old woman reported an alleged assault that took place over a weekend. Another 19-year-old victim came to light during the police investigation.
The charges have not been tested in court. Both accused have been released with conditions and are set to appear in provincial court in January, police said.
The university administration banned one of the men from campus, while another has been granted restricted access to attend classes. All other student privileges, including participating in varsity athletics, have been revoked.
The We Stand Together initiative has been widely supported by football players, says Bruce, who is from Ontario.
“They’ve been incredible. Almost right away they started posting the logo on their social media and ordering t-shirts,” she says of her fellow varsity athletes. “Ultimately at St. F.X. we’re a family and we take care of each other.”
The campaign is selling tshirts and accepting donations for stickers and pins to raise money for additional sexual education training at the university.
Yet one of the most moving aspects of the solidarity campaign is the tense two-minute video, produced by Donald Jewkes and with spoken word by Kuzmyk, who is also from Ontario. The video follows a woman walking home alone in the dark on campus while spoken word poetry and instrumental music gradually grows louder.
The poetry raises questions about trivializing sexual assault, tolerating gendered violence and victim-blaming.
“I wonder if you felt her heart break when you broke into her. I wonder if the halt of her breath ever made you wonder if you should halt as well,” Kuzmyk says in her poem. “I wonder if the strength that you used to hold down her arms made you feel strong. I wonder if her complete inability to respond made you pause at all.”