After Chanel Miller was sexually assaulted on the Stanford University campus in 2015 — the public knew her then as Emily Doe — the school installed a garden in the spot where the assault happened, along with a plaque showing a quote from Chanel's powerful victim-impact statement. But after the school deemed the quotes she chose too potentially triggering for other survivors, a group of students has taken the matter on via virtual reality in an effort to best honor Chanel's voice.

To bring Chanel's own words to the site of her attack, Stanford senior Khoi Le and recent grads Kyle Qian and Hope Schroeder created Dear Visitor, a project that shows the garden with two different virtual plaques featuring Chanel's words, which viewers can also hear in Chanel's own voice. Additionally, the project collected letters from the Stanford community about the space to foster a memory about what happened, and the work that's been done since. The project is being unveiled in a special viewing on September 27.

"That space is easily ignored and abused, with no reference to its significance. We find beer cans, Juul pods, and we think it's a problem," Hope told Teen Vogue. "So we are a group of students interested in augmented reality because it is a way to have public space interact with technology, and we see it as a way to add context to public spaces. We realized we had a unique set of tools to do something about it."

Courtesy of Dear Visitor

The students felt called to action after Stanford rejected Chanel's chosen quotes from her victim-impact statement, delivered in court to her attacker Brock Turner. The statement, which went viral, was delivered before Chanel publicly revealed her identity. Because it was then anonymous, many felt the statement spoke for survivors at large. But the school rejected the quotes after speaking to sexual assault counselors, worrying that it would "not be supportive in a healing space for survivors"; instead, the school suggested using quotes like "I’m right here, I’m okay, everything’s okay, I’m right here." This suggestion prompted Chanel to pull out of the project, sparked student backlash, and, Hope said, and made some worry it would be a way to silence Chanel.

The Dear Visitor team used the quotes that Chanel had asked to be included in the project, consulting Chanel herself, sexual assault experts, and others to make sure the project was sensitive and responsible, Hope said.