By Sara Ballenger

T-shirts of different colors, decorated with powerful images and messages relating to domestic violence and abuse, hung on a clothesline at Foothill College last week. It was a public art display meant to be provocative, meaningful and disturbing.

The “Clothesline Project” began in 1990, when members of the Cape Cod Women’s Agenda hung a clothesline in Hyannis, Mass., with 31 shirts designed by survivors of assault, rape and incest. The project has spawned over 300 Clothesline projects nationally and internationally.

Since then, clotheslines have been displayed at schools, universities and locations all across the country - including Foothill, said Lori Thomas, of the marketing department at Foothill.

The project came to Foothill last week as a way to raise awareness of domestic violence and abuse, during March, Women’s History Month.

Foothill students, staff and the public were invited to come into the student health office to design a T-shirt representing their personal experience with domestic violence. The shirts hung on a clothesline in Mellow Yellow Cafe on campus from March 18 to 22.

“Clothesline” distributed blank T-shirts in different colors which represented the type of personal experience they wanted to portray.

A white T-shirt was for anyone creating a T-shirt on behalf of someone who died from domestic violence; yellow or beige, for survivors who have been battered or assaulted; red, pink and orange for survivors of rape or sexual assault; blue or green for survivors of child sexual abuse; purple or lavender for people who were attacked because of their sexual orientation; and black for any other reason, Thomas added.

“One out of four women and one out of seven men will be a victim of domestic violence in their lifetimes,” said Naomi Kitajima, coordinator of health services at Foothill College. “This is a visible artistic display that personally reaches people. It’s a statement people make about their anger, forgiveness or personal experience.”

One T-shirt, called “I hate my name,” was made by a Foothill student who witnessed her father killing her mother, Kitajima said. Another shirt was made by a sister of a young mother killed by her husband.

Since the exhibit addressed such a graphic and sometimes violent topic in such a realistic way, a comment book was available for the public to write about their feelings concerning the project and domestic violence.

“One student wrote in our reflection book that he had been a perpetrator in the past and he was sorry,” Kitajima said. “It was really powerful and healing.”

His statement echoed a sense of remorse and responsibility.

“I just want to say that I am sorry to all of you, I am sorry that people like me were so heartless to treat you the way we did. To anybody who feels it’s their fault, it’s not. It’s the fault of the offender, not you,” it read.

The exhibit aims to educate people about how prevalent abuse remains in our society and what they can do to stop it.

Psychological and health services are available to all students, as well as a network of community agencies that deal with abuse.

“A clothesline of a hundred or more shirts is a very direct message of how lives are impacted by abuse. There is strength in numbers, and it shows that people’s lives are touched by abuse even in Silicon Valley,” Thomas said. “It’s simple to just hang T-shirts on a clothesline, but it’s very provocative.”

For more information about the project, call 949-7243.