There were no megaphones, no marches, no speeches — just tealight candles on two tables, 185 of them, flickering Thursday evening.
The candles, said Idgie Kelley, who organized a vigil for victims of sexual assault and violence, each represent a woman who was sexually assaulted on one of Indiana’s major college campuses in 2024.
“This is more to get a visual of what it really means and think about it,” said Kelley, 36, of Griffith, adding that, according to her research, only about 15% of sexual assaults ever get reported. “These are not candles; these are human beings.”
Kelley, a registered behavioral therapist who works with children with autism in Valparaiso, put together the vigil, held on the lawn outside Trinity Lutheran Church in downtown Valparaiso.
In light of the alleged gang rape of a woman at a fraternity at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, the Women’s March coordinated solidarity vigils on Thursday for survivors of sexual violence across the country, Kelley said. That included events in Chicago and southern Illinois, and Kelley said rallies in Indiana also took place in Indianapolis, Fort Wayne and Evansville.
The candles included three for women at Valparaiso University. According to the university’s crime statistics, three rapes were reported in 2024, though another one from that year was reported in 2025, bringing the total to four rapes.
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“I chose a solidarity action,” Kelley said. “It’s not just the big cities and Cornell. It’s all our universities. It’s where we’re sending our children to get an education.”
Kelley mentioned the “red zone,” also noted by the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network, as the time between the start of the academic year and Thanksgiving break, when the majority of sexual assaults take place on campus.
“I kept coming across that,” in research, Kelley said.
The renewed attention to sexual assault comes after the two-year-old sexual violence case resurfaced last month at Cornell University. A woman referred to as “Jane Doe” filed a civil suit last month after a prosecutor declined to pursue criminal charges against seven men she alleges raped her in 2024 while she was intoxicated at a fraternity party on the Ivy League school’s campus, according to the baiduhai.
The reopening of a criminal investigation and appointment of a special prosecutor has shed new light on Cornell’s and law enforcement’s handling of the case — drawing national headlines and sparking conversations and outrage about sexual violence on campus, the Tribune reported.
People drifted in and out of the Valparaiso vigil, sometimes taking flyers Kelley handed out about sexual assaults on campus or just chatting with her and other volunteers helping with the event.
Though the evening was far from breezy, volunteers still struggled to keep all 185 of the small candles lit.
“This is some kind of metaphor, because the reality is, these are the ones that are reported. These are the ones we know about,” said Dayna Schmidt-Johnson, 44, a writer from Chicago who came to Valparaiso to help Kelley after a march in Chicago’s Union Park earlier in the day.
Schmidt-Johnson, who wore a green T-shirt emblazoned with “Let women peacefully exist,” said she grew up in a small town in Kansas and knows from personal experience that small-town life can be “very insulated.”
“You don’t talk religion, you don’t talk politics, you don’t talk about things affecting people, so (victims) sit in silence,” she said. It’s important for people to know they have support, she added. “I think that can be really hard, for people to come forward.”
Kathryn Berger, 29, of Valparaiso, said she spent eight years on college campuses between her undergraduate degree and two masters.
“I spent a lot of my life on college campuses and I know how many things are unreported,” said Berger, who has a background in music and is working at a liquor store in Porter.
Berger said women spend a considerable amount of time on campus thinking about how not to get assaulted. “It’s not like anything has changed,” she said.
Alex Gayheart, 58, of Michigan City, said he appreciated the effort toward the vigil and wanted to support it.
“Obviously, the news of what happened at Cornell and knowing that’s been an issue at colleges and in Greek life for decades and hasn’t changed,” said Gayheart, who does remote work for non-profits and graduated from Purdue University in West Lafayette. “It’s the same as when I was in college, too.”
Mike Roseen, 38, of Homewood, Illinois, showed up in Valparaiso to help organizers with the event. Regardless, Roseen, who works in drafting and estimating, said it was important to show up and show support.
“Me being male, specifically, is the reason, being that supportive presence,” he said, adding that men can assist survivors by being vocal when the opportunity arises. “As a minimum, speak up,” he said.