To the Editors of The Crimson:

Wednesday's official staff editorial ("Take Back the Night 1992: March for Safety," 22 April) suggests that Take Back the Night's mandate is limited to acts of violence a against women in the streets at night.

However, as the organizers of Take Back the Night 1992, we believe that Take Back the Night must be about more. As Allen S. Galper insists in his dissent, it must confront the misogynist violence of such acts as the brutal murder of Mary Jo Frug as well as of the Law Revue's recent parody of her article on the anniversary of her death.

Hatred of women exists on a continuum, and it expresses itself in verbal as well as physical acts of violence. We are not willing, like Galper, to dismiss what he calls "time-old complaints about shuttle buses and escort services." We have demanded physical safety and greater protection from the University repeatedly, and we will continue to do so.

We are still unsafe as we cross the Yard, go up to the Yard and Quad and walk by the River houses, and we welcome The Crimson's call for better lighting and expanded shuttle bus service.

However, the goal of Take Back the Night is an end to the rampant violence against women, and this violence is often not perpetrated on the streets or at night.

Very often women are not endangered by the stranger sneaking through their windows or attacking them on the street, but by those who are familiar to them or already in their homes.

A survey conducted by Ms. Magazine of college-aged women found that one in four had been raped and that 84 percent of those raped had known their attacker. The single largest cause of injury to women in the U.S. in domestic violence; 52 percent of all women are physically abused by their partner at least once and 20 percent of emergency room visits by women are for injuries caused by battering.

These statistics suggest that better lighting and an improved shuttle bus service will not end the war on women's bodies. Historically, Take Back the Night has been concerned with ensuring safe streets and enabling women to walk alone at night and free from harassment.

However, as women have spoken out about violence at the open microphones of Take Back the Night rallies, in the courts and on the floor of the Senate, it has become apparent that the violence which threatens and touches us everyday is not only or even most frequently at the hands of strangers or in alleys late at night.

"Take Back the Night" must be interpreted symbolically. In the words of Gail Dines, a sociology professor at Wheelock College, who spoke on Monday night about pornography and violence against women, women are asking for too little.

We cannot be content to just take back the night. We must take back the night and the day. We must take back the lives from the threats of violence and from the actual violence that we experience everyday, that one of us experiences every six seconds.

The official Crimson editorial says, "No matter how physically strong a person is, he or she is always in danger of becoming a victim of random violence." We completely agree, and we are appalled by the fact that we are not safe on our own campus or in the streets of Cambridge.

Late at night, we cannot go by ourselves to Christy's, the Science Center or another house without accepting a level of risk that is unacceptable. But Take Back the Night is about more than "random violence." It is specifically about violence against women.

On a lot of campuses, men are excluded from Take Back the Night. At Harvard, we welcome men and ask them to join in our call for an end to the insane violence. Men are involved in the issue of violence against women as the friends, boyfriends, sons, fathers and brothers of women.