The Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs was draped in denim Wednesday in a gesture to raise awareness of sexual assault and show support for victims.

About 3,000 cadets and airmen at the academy — roughly three-quarters of its cadet population — wore jeans and black “Stand Up USAFA” shirts to take part in Denim Day, which is an international anti-sexual assault movement.

Cadets and airmen also took part in discussions around the campus on how to stop sexual assault, as well as talks on consent and healthy relationships, the academy said in a Wednesday release.

“The academy is participating in Denim Day to make a visual statement: That we stand up against victim-blaming and sexual violence,” Cadet 1st Class Jess Tobias said in a video on the academy’s Facebook page. “We want our peers to feel comfortable coming forward here at the academy.”

The academy’s Wings of Blue parachute team also conducted a drop onto the Terrazzo as part of Denim Day.

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Denim Day was inspired by an infamous Italian supreme court case in 1998 that overturned a rape conviction on the grounds that the alleged victim’s pants were so tight she must have helped her alleged assailant take them off and, as a result, she must have consented. The official Denim Day website said that in Italy, this became known as the “jeans alibi.” Women in the Italian parliament became angry and staged a protest at the Italian supreme court in which they wore jeans.

The first American Denim Day demonstration was held in Los Angeles in April 1999, and demonstrations have followed every April to commemorate Sexual Assault Awareness Month. Twenty states including Colorado have officially recognized Denim Day since 2011, the academy said.

A member of the Air Force Academy's Wings of Blue parachute team drops onto the campus' Terrazzo as part of Denim Day. (From the Air Force Academy Facebook page)

The academy has long struggled with how to stop sexual assault and how to help survivors. The Defense Department’s Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office released a report in January that estimated the percentage of women at the Air Force Academy who have been assaulted increased from 11.2 percent in 2016 to 15.1 percent in 2018. Sexual assaults of women at the U.S. Naval Academy and West Point also increased, although the percentage of male sexual assaults at all three schools either stayed roughly the same or declined.

In 2017, the academy restructured its Sexual Assault Prevention and Response Office after an investigation uncovered misconduct and mismanagement, which jeopardized its ability to support victims of sexual assault.

Last year, the academy announced it would no longer punish cadets who are victims of sexual assault for underage drinking, fraternization or certain other “collateral” misconduct in an attempt to increase reporting of those assaults. Academy officials were concerned that many sexual assault victims were not coming forward because they feared being punished for misconduct that emerged during the investigations of their assaults.

The same day that the academy was demonstrating, an ethics professor was arrested on charges of attempting to lure a child — who was actually an officer with the Arapahoe County Sheriff’s Office — over the internet.

Stephen Losey is the air warfare reporter for Defense News. He previously covered leadership and personnel issues at Air Force Times, and the Pentagon, special operations and air warfare at Military.com. He has traveled to the Middle East to cover U.S. Air Force operations.

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