Clothesline Project airs out secrets

Messages painted on T-shirts hanging in the Quad are part of the Clothesline Project at Saddleback College. (Marivel Guzman)

The Clothesline Project, displayed in Saddleback College’s Business and General Studies Quad, is part of Awareness Week sponsored by the Associated Student Government. “The project’s purpose is to raise awareness about addiction, abuses, health and the LGBTQ community to students on campus,” said Jonathan Stephens, 21-year-old architecture major and director of budget and finance. Students volunteered their stories to expose life’s hardships anonymously on multicolored T-shirts.

“It’s not Ok! Tell someone CALL 1800 SAFE,” was a message painted on a T-shirt as part of Saddleback College’s Clothesline Project. (Marivel Guzman)

“The clothesline is to create awareness for various issues that goes on in our community, students can write something secretive that happened in their lives, like bullying, drug use and abuse, sexual assault. The list goes on and its completely anonymous,” said a member of awareness week that wished to remained anonymous. According to William Vassetizadeh, 19-year-old bioengineering student and director of students support services, some students wrote encouraging messages while others wrote messages of hardships they had gone through. “At the age of 3, I was molested by my babysitter’s son, then again at the age of 7 by my cousin. My parents did not listen or believe me when I tried to tell them,” reads one of the T-shirts. Another details family struggles. “My alcoholic father left my mother and I three times and finally never came back, ” read another message left by anonymous hand. Students were impacted by the way these messages were delivered. “They are powerful statements. You write things that you never said to any one. Here you have the opportunity to air it out and to make a difference,” Vassetizadeh said.

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