Wearing only black and staying silent for an hour, 17 Brenau University students hoped to make a bold statement about violence against women.

The students, part of professor Ken Frank’s "Women and the Law" class, walked up to the school’s front lawn at 10:30 a.m. Wednesday and lined up facing Bailey Hall and Pearce Auditorium.

They named one classmate, senior Tessy Rusera, as their spokeswoman.

She said she hoped the event would serve "to shout out to females around the Brenau campus, because we believe that among us there might be someone who is a victim or has been a victim, who knows a victim or who may know an abuser."

"If we do speak out to them and tell how actually bad this is, and how this affects our society as a whole, we hope they will speak out against this. If one person speaks out, that means another person will speak out.

"We’re trying to reach one person at a time, hopefully."

Students had tasks to perform to prepare for Wednesday’s event, such as handling marketing and publicity, said Rusera, a conflict resolution and legal studies major.

"I did my research — I collected a couple of facts — so I would be able to speak to someone who had any questions about this," she said.

Frank said his students have been learning this semester "about how the laws and legal issues impact women. We’ve studied all kinds of issues: pay inequity, sexual harassment, prostitution, pornography."

The class has had several guest speakers, including Georgia Supreme Court Justice Carol Hunstein and Nellie D. Duke, chairwoman of the Georgia Commission on Women.

Frank said Wednesday’s event is "patterned after the Women in Black protests that grew out of Latin America" and spread to other regions of the world, including Israel.

"It was used as a tool to bring awareness to the disappearance of husbands, sons and brothers in the military dictatorships of South America," he said.

"The widows, mothers and sisters would stand in solidarity at an appointed hour outside the courthouse and bring awareness to that issue."

Frank, who snapped pictures of his students as they stood at attention with arms folded or hands clasped, praised them for their work.

"They set this up, they did all the research," he said. "I’m real proud of them."