Wichita State students Nozaina Khawar, Katie Luu and Kim Wong are good friends. 

They look out for each other —especially at night.

Wong, a senior, said they often get together after a late night of studying at Ablah Library — for safety from sexual offense. 

“We’ll walk together as one,” she said. Wong said they get into one friend’s car, drive to another’s and another’s until each gets in their car, starts it and drives away.

“We wait for them and then branch off and go home,” she said. 

They walk in each other’s shoes, literally, while the Walk-A-Mile In Her Shoes sexual assault awareness event figuratively and literally puts men “in her shoes.” 

The annual event, where men walk a mile around the main campus wearing women’s shoes, was held Tuesday night.

Interfraternity Council President Matt Wedel said, “It’s a call to action to the men on campus and everywhere how big the problem is. They need to change their mentality about how they act and how they think, actually.”

Luu said she is prepared when she is walking alone to her car. She talks to her sister or a friend on her telephone while walking and has her keys in her hand with one protruding between her fingers to use as a weapon.

“I watch a lot of ‘Law and Order,’ and it’s made me more cautious,” she said. “You’re supposed to aim at their eyeball and you actually scoop their eye out.”

WSU Police Captain Cecil Hashenberger said department officials talk with students and parents about safety around campus.

“Those alerts freak us out,” Luu said. “We talk about ‘did you hear about that alert?’”

This includes the blue emergency lights around the main campus that allows anyone to press a button to draw attention to danger they may be in and an intercom system to talk directly to the WSU Police Department.

“We don’t have a lot of sexual assault on our campus,” Hashenberger said.

Statistics on the department’s website indicate there were two forcible sexual offenses on campus in 2008, three in 2009 and three in 2010. All were in residence halls.

Hashenberger said sexual offenses are underreported crimes.

Psychology graduate teaching assistant Angie Hardage-Bundy said many reasons exist for underreporting the crime of rape.

“It’s shame, stigma and self-blame that’s associated with the word,” she said. 

Hardage-Bundy said the phrase “victim blaming” entered the language more than 40 years ago. Often the women are blamed for what happened, and people often have different points of view about what happened.

“What does it look like and what does it not look like. There’s a lot of gray in terms of what does consensual sex look like,” she said. “Victim blaming is alive and well.”

“What is it about our culture that allows men to behave aggressively?” Hardage-Bundy said. “This is looked at as normative behavior.”

Hardage-Bundy said most rapes are committed by someone the victim knows, which makes implicating that person more difficult than implicating someone the victim does not know.

Hashenberger does encourage people to report it, not just for themselves, but for others, too.

“If it happens to one, it’s going to happen to someone else,” he said.

Hashenberger said he understands it’s not a crime people want to talk about.

The WSU Testing and Counseling Center offers confidential counseling, which Hashenberger described as a “big plus.”

He said the center features a University Behavior Intervention Team (UBIT). 

“UBIT is in the counseling center so they can start a case file and head off any issues,” he said.

Hashenberger said anyone could report suspicious behavior to the center with the suspicious person receiving professional attention regarding his or her personal issues.

Hardage-Bundy said believing someone who says they were assaulted is the best first course of action while avoiding asking “why” questions because they can be confrontational.

“Steer away from ‘why’ questions and emphasize ‘what’ questions,” she said. “’What’ questions ask people to tell their story.”