HANOVER — A group of Dartmouth alumni and student advocates have launched a platform for survivors of gender harassment and sexual violence to submit and share their stories.

The website and Instagram page for Dartmouth Speaks will focus on “allowing survivors to articulate what they want to share with their experience,” said Diana Whitney, one of the leaders of the advocacy group Dartmouth Against Gender Harassment and Sexual Violence.

Each story is published anonymously unless otherwise requested, and the account also will include voices from advocates within the Dartmouth community.

“If you can reach one person and make them feel less alone, it’s one step forward in the right direction,” said Itzel Rojas, a collaborator on the project and recent Ph.D. graduate from Dartmouth.

“A lot of times, these experiences make us feel that we lost our voice, our autonomy,” Rojas said.

Experiencing sexual harassment or assault can be isolating, but the group hopes to address that by connecting survivors and sharing stories.

“There’s a powerful aspect to healing, knowing that someone had a parallel experience to you,” she said.

Last fall, seven women filed a $70 million class-action lawsuit against the college, alleging they were sexually harassed and assaulted by three tenured professors in the Department of Psychological and Brain Sciences.

The suit claims the college knew and tolerated sexual misconduct by the professors. In response to the suit, the college recently put together a campus initiative to address ongoing concerns about inclusion and the environment for women at the school.

But after the news broke, there was an outpouring of stories from survivors on a Facebook group for alumnae, Whitney said.

“There was this whole range of experiences from what people call subtler microaggressions all the way up to assault and rape,” she said.

Rojas was thinking a lot about the stories that had been shared in the immediate aftermath of the suit. She said she wanted to find a way to collect expressions of trauma and healing as a way to both hold a culture at Dartmouth accountable and to help people recognize they’re not alone.

“The harm is not just the initial violence itself but the silencing that happens afterward,” Whitney said.

The full stories will be shared on dartmouthspeaks.com, while @dartmouthspeaks on Instagram will be home to shorter snippets of those stories.

The group has taken inspiration from #MeTooSTEM, a website where women in the science fields can share their experiences.

Rojas said the group has received submissions from some of the first classes of Dartmouth women, after the college went coed in 1972.

“What tip of the iceberg is this?” Rojas asked. “How many people have gone through something?”

Rojas and Whitney, a 1995 Dartmouth graduate, also will announce the project at this year’s Take Back the Night demonstration on Friday. These events happen at colleges nationwide to bring awareness to issues of sexual violence.

A Take Back the Night rally in 1992 convinced Whitney to stay at Dartmouth. She was close to transferring out after she had been sexually assaulted a few months prior.

“I didn’t really have the language for what happened to me,” she said.

So she started going to the Women’s Resource Center. That’s where she heard about Take Back the Night.

Nearly 100 women gathered on the green and lit candles. It was the first time Whitney had heard anyone talk publicly about being raped or assaulted. She said she felt connected to a community.

“I think it was hearing the strength of people,” she said.

Whitney said the college has changed in lots of positive ways since then.

“There are student groups that exist for prevention and support of survivors — the fact that there’s a Title IX office,” Whitney said. “There’s more awareness and education.”

But, the statistics on campus still are grim, Whitney said. A 2017 survey showed that 34 percent of undergraduate women at Dartmouth reported nonconsensual touching or penetration.

But Whitney and Rojas remain hopeful change will continue.

“The first way the culture changes is by shining light on darkness, on things that have been swept under the rug,” Whitney said.

Daniela Vidal Allee can be reached at dallee@vnews.com or 603-727-3211.