Lincoln students make a fashion statement against dating violence
LINCOLN – T-shirts espousing anti-dating-violence messages hang from a line with clothespins, lining the back wall past the entrance to Lincoln High School.
They show messages like “love heals, not hurts,” “hands are for helping, not hitting,” and “you are no one’s property.” One is ripped and reads, “You wouldn’t let this happen to your clothes. Don’t let it happen to you.”
The T-shirts – made in the school’s advisories, which meet for 18 minutes after first period – are in recognition of Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month, which was February. Awareness efforts at LHS are a collaboration between the National Honor Society and the Journalism Broadcast Academy, which has made public service announcements.
The public service announcements are part of a midterm project for Doreen Picozzi’s broadcast journalism class, in which students could choose to tackle child safety or teen safety issues.
One video, set to X Ambassadors’ “Unsteady,” alternates between shots of a couple hugging, and the boy yelling at the girl, grabbing her face and slamming it into a wall. It ends with the message, “Once an abuser, always an abuser.”
Another video is titled “He’s not always the abuser, she could be too” and deals with emotional abuse.
It shows a boy listening to a voicemail in which his girlfriend attacks him for letting another girl borrow his sweatshirt at a football game.
As he listens to the voicemail, he is getting bombarded with texts that say things like, “I’m a priority, you better not be hanging out with your dumb friends,” “That shirt you wore today was hideous btw,” “I honestly don’t want to be seen with you some- times” and “We both know you won’t be able to find anyone else,” the last one with a smiley face.
After chastising him for not responding to a text from two and a half hours ago, she
ends the voicemail with, “Bye, I love you!” and kissing noises.
Ailsa Ferland, president of National Honor Society and a broadcast student, said that the reaction from some of the students in her advisory was, “Wow, I never think of dating violence to be like this.” Ferland is also the managing editor of Lion’s Roar, the student newspaper.
She noted that there is a lot more to relationship abuse than students may realize, and that much of it isn’t visible.
Lincoln High School students have recognizing Teen Dating Violence Awareness Month for a few years. The school partners with the Lindsay Ann Burke Memorial Fund, named for the Rhode Island College graduate who was murdered by her boyfriend in 2005, at age 23.
Gerardo Martinez was sentenced to life in prison without parole after killing Burke less than a month after she moved out of their place to live with her brother.
“We believe every form of violence (verbal, emotional, sexual, physical, and financial) was used on her,” Anna Burke, Lindsay’s mother, wrote on the Memorial Fund website. “Being so young, inexperienced, compassionate, trusting, and naïve, she became the perfect victim and he was the ultimate abuser.”
As warning signs of relationship violence, the Memorial Fund lists extreme jealousy, controlling behavior, unrealistic expectations, isolation, severe mood swings, past battering and more.
“Really the purpose of the fund is not only to honor her memory but also to get the word out to students, about the warning signs, the danger,” said Ron Almeida, National Honor Society advisor at LHS.
The school was one of five to receive a $200 grant from the Lindsay Ann Burke Memorial Fund, he said, along with the high schools in Johnston, Middletown, South Kingstown and Block Island.
While Almeida said the issue is obviously important for everyone at Lincoln High School, he feels it is particularly relevant for seniors, considering “they’re going off to college next year, and we hear all these stories about sexual assault on college campuses.”
The T-shirts will be up throughout March and the public service announcements will keep running.
Almeida noted, “I think it’s one thing for teachers to get up and talk about it, but it’s another thing to hear it from your peers.”
Students who are concerned about dating violence for themselves or for a friend can turn to a guidance counselor, the school social worker, the school resource officer from the Lincoln Police Department or one of the advisors, who are assigned to the same group of students for all four years.