Name: Suzanne Shurling
Age: 30
Hometown: Effingham, Georgia
Year: Graduate Student (Graduating)
School: Undergraduate at Brewton-Parker College, Masters at Georgia Southern
Major/Minor: Masters of Arts and Social Science with an emphasis in Sociology
Dream job: Running a non-profit organization
Sign: Leo
Relationship Status: Recently Single
Her Campus: What is your position at the Georgia Southern Counseling Center?
Suzanne: I’m a graduate assistant (GA) for the SART, which is the Sexual Assault Response Team and I an intern with the Statesboro Regional Sexual Assault Center (SRSAC). I actually graduate in 31 days.
Her Campus: What is Walk a Mile in Her Shoes exactly?
Suzanne: Walk a Mile in Her Shoes is a national march that happens all over the country. It’s a men’s march to end gendered violence, specifically sexual and domestic assault. The way I explain it is that it’s a way to raise funds and awareness for these things, and for the local rape crisis center. It’s a more light-hearted and fun way of tackling this subject.
Her Campus: What happens during Walk a Mile in Her Shoes?
Suzanne: We sign up all the guys that come and we give them three-inch red heels to wear during the march to draw people’s attention. Once we draw people’s attention we are able to explain what we’re raising money and awareness for.
Her Campus: What made you want to do Walk a Mile in Her Shoes?
Suzanne: This is actually our fourth year doing Walk a Mile at Georgia Southern, and I’ve been with the march the entire four years we’ve done it. It started because I got involved with Sexual Assault Student Educators (SASE) when I was doing my post back work, and each year I just got more and more involved until this year I was on the planning committee and one of the volunteer recruitment coordinators.
Her Campus: How many guys generally come out to this event?
Suzanne: Last year we had 205, and this year we had a total of 259 registered walkers. Which makes sense seeing as we have increased each year we have had this. For example, the first year, we estimated there would be less than 50 people and ended up with 90 guys showing up.
Her Campus: What made you want to get involved with rape activism?
Suzanne: Well, I really have a heart and passion for advocating for women who are victims of gender violence, which specifically you see in sexual assault and domestic violence. That’s why I got involved with SASE, that’s why I became a certified victim’s advocate at the Statesboro Regional Sexual Assault Center, and that’s why I got my GA position here. I really wanted this position so I could work these events, and I feel like it’s such a problem in our own community. I’ve seen it and someone needs to speak up for these girls. I feel like that someone is me.
Her Campus: Do you have a lot of women come to you specifically?
Suzanne: As an advocate at the SRSAC, if someone calls while I’m on duty I can take the call and talk to them, we even have male callers, but I also take cases. Cases meaning that if they decide they want to have the exam I go with them to the Teal House, and I make sure that they understand completely what’s going on. I can be there for them even if it’s just holding their hand during an exam, and inform them of what most victims don’t know. For instance, most girls don’t know that in Bulloch County you have a year to decide if you want to press charges after you exam is done.
Her Campus: How do you help these women after that day/night?
Suzanne: We can help them find counseling, we can help them find further medical help, we offer trial advocacy in the case they do decide to press charges and do go to court, and many other things.
Her Campus: Has anyone come up to you outside of the rape crisis center?
Suzanne: Well I am really involved with SASE and other organizations, so I’m now kind of known for that. So to answer your question, yes I have had people come up to me and disclose to me in ways that they normally wouldn’t if they didn’t know who I was. Most victims don’t disclose that information to anyone until two years after the incident, and even then it’s usually a close friend.
Her Campus: How does being known as the person someone can come to make you feel?
Suzanne: I almost feel honored in a way that people have that kind of trust in me, to want to come up and tell me something so personal.
Her Campus: Do you know any statistics you would like to share?
Suzanne: Of course! There are, nationally, 293,000 new victimizations every year with 72 percent being re-victimizations. The conservative number of women in college is 1 in 4. Beyond college, the number goes up to 1 in 5. In the state of Georgia every 1 in 2 women and 1 in 5 men will experience sexual violence in their lifetime, which obviously makes our state numbers much, much higher. The most reliable number we have from men because they under-report so often is 1 in 6 men before the age of 18, and after the age of 18, the number drops to 1 in 36. The numbers for Gender Sexuality Minority(GSM) individuals almost double. Then once you get to the transgender community it gets even worse; 63 percent of these individuals will experience sexual assault in their lifetime. Two percent, not of victims, but of all transgender individuals, will experience sexual assault by a police officer while on duty, and ten percent will experience sexual assault by a medical professional. These are the depressing statistics that live in my head.
Her Campus: Why do these numbers change so drastically for each group?
Suzanne: Anything that makes you an “other”, if you’re not white, if you’re not rich, if you have a different sexual orientation, anything that makes you different makes your chances go up drastically of being sexually assaulted. For example, there were 30 plus transgendered women of color last year that were murdered.
Her Campus: Are you planning on going and being an advocate somewhere else after Georgia Southern?
Suzanne: No, not at all. I love Statesboro. I’m applying for jobs on campus. With the jobs I’ve been looking at, I’ll probably become the healthy sex lady; consent and condoms. I’m still going to volunteer with the SRSAC and be an advocate, so if I have anything to say about it I’m staying here.
Her Campus: Is there anything you want to tell the readers of Her Campus?
Suzanne: I would definitely want them to know about all of the organizations I’m involved in. Like SASE meets every Tuesday at seven. They can contact me if they want to become a victim’s advocate at SRSAC, and we definitely have some other big events coming up this semester. We wanted to have a movie night where we are trying to show the documentary The Hunting Ground, we want to have an open mic poetry night for victims, and SRSAC is having a yard sale April 16th.
Her Campus: What are some other things that you guys do that are like Walk a Mile in Her Shoes?
Suzanne: Walk a Mile is definitely our biggest event, and Take Back the Night is our second biggest. This is where we march around campus and the community because we, especially as women or GSM community members, shouldn’t have to be afraid to walk alone after dark. It is a way to try to end rape culture. We do Take Back the Night two weeks before spring break instead of in April, which is Sexual Assault Awareness Month, just so we can get this information in people’s minds before then.
We also do the Clothes Line Project, which is when people can come decorate different colored shirts whether they are victims or supporters, and we then hang them up all over campus as a way of showing support and also that other victims are not alone.
We also have the End the Violence Rally which is where we open the mic to people to speak. A lot of people get up and speak and every year we have people speak for the first time about what happened to them. My friend, actually, got up and shared his story for the very first time. We’ve done that for 16 years and it’s a very powerful event.
Her Campus: Are there statistics from Georgia Southern that we should know about?
Suzanne: Reporting on the school level is still new. I will say that I was told that we had the most reports through Title IX last year than we have ever had before, and while some people would see that as a bad thing I would not, because at the SRSAC we had four times the amount of cases, so these are just the ones being reported to the school. So the number of Title IX reports doesn’t mean that the number of rapes is increasing, but means that students are learning where to report now, and that means we are doing our job which made me really proud of our work. I don’t think that Georgia Southern is a dangerous school, but I don’t think any school is particularly dangerous. This isn’t an issue with just one school, but is more of a rape culture problem. Until we are able to talk about this problem and deal with this problem at every school the epidemic is just going to continue.
Her Campus: Is there anything you want to say to victims that may be reading?
Suzanne: I would want them to know that they are not alone because that is one of the first thoughts, and the second thought is the shame. Victims need to know that you could be standing in the middle of the road naked and that doesn’t give someone the right to rape you. Unless you say you want sex, you did nothing to deserve it; you can’t ask to be raped. So I want them to know that it’s not their fault, they aren’t alone, and they can get help if they want it.