West Hartford Man Leaves Legacy of Social Change at Clark University

Dan Deutsch may be finishing his studies at Clark University, but he will leave behind an initiative which he hopes will continue to raise awareness of sexual violence and bring about real social change.

Deutsch, a member of Clark's class of 2013 who has earned his Bachelor's degree in communications and theater and will complete an accelerated 5th year program for a Master's in communications, began work on "The Denim Project" last summer.

The first phase involved planning and writing, but Deutsch's senior project culminated this year with a series of events designed to express, explore, and empower awareness and conversation about sexual violence.

Clark students were invited to "express" their feelings about sexual violence through an art exhibit run in conjunction with Clark's Center for the Fine Arts. Students' survival stories were provided anonymously to artists commissioned to create a representation of those experiences.

Paintings, sculptures, and jeans were some of the end products. One of the most interesting creations, Deutsch said, was an exhibit using two side-by-side TV screens, each playing 20-second loops in negative colors with a story of a brother and sister.

The "explore" phase was a community conversation. "This was a difficult dialogue, designed to bring the community together to talk about difficult issues like sexual violence on campus," Deutsch said. The conversation was not intended to find solutions, but rather "the conversation is key to raising awareness," said Deutsch.

The final event – a living art show – was the culmination of the entire project and a night of "student empowerment," Deutsch said. It was a fashion show, that included Jessica Johnson, founder of Jeans 4 Justice, in Solana Beach, CA, as a speaker.

Deutsch interned for Jeans 4 Justice last year, and the organization inspired him to create The Denim Project. Jeans 4 Justice is described in a news release as an organization that believes in "a community-driven model of social change that first brings awareness of an issue, educates on how to be an active bystander, and finally empowers participants as leaders in the movement to end sexual violence."

Jackson, the founder of Jeans 4 Justice, uses jeans as an artistic and action symbol, Deutsch said. The organization's name stems from a grassroots campaign inspired by a 1999 case in Italian High Court in which a rape conviction was overturned because the victim was wearing tight jeans, and members of the Italian Parliament supported the victim by also wearing jeans.

"When I started working on The Denim Project, I had no idea that it would be this big," said Deutsch.

"This is a cause I believe in, and that's another reason why I wanted to bring it out here," said Deutsch. Jeans 4 Justice has been very active on the West Coast, but not in New England.

Deutsch said that Clark already has an "extremely welcoming and open atmosphere," and he's not sure the project would have had as much success if it had been run anywhere else. "I feel like this is purely a physical representation of my experience at Clark," he said.

He will hand The Denim Project off to another student who worked with him this year, and next year, as he finishes his Master's Degree, Deutsch plans to volunteer with the Worcester Consortium and bring awareness of the issue of sexual violence to a larger level.