Take Back the Night advocates tolerance, safety
SU students and faculty took part in the Take Back the Night annual event Wednseday night. The event started with speeches in Hendricks Chapel and was followed by a campus march.
To the attentive audience that filled Hendricks Chapel on Wednesday evening, Thomas Wolfe said he senses a unique energy building whenever he comes to Syracuse University for the annual event, ‘Take Back the Night.’
‘Feel the energy building in the room,’ said Wolfe, senior vice president and dean of student affairs. ‘We are creating tonight the next step in creating a safe place on this campus.’
Wolf encouraged the diverse audience, filled with students, faculty and community members, to use this energy in fighting against violence in all forms and promote widespread tolerance.
As Wolfe stepped down from the podium, the crowd erupted in an applause that echoed throughout the chapel, which was decorated with colorful, student-made signs promoting open-mindedness.
Working together to end all forms of violence and promote tolerance for diversity was a theme the other speakers at the event stressed as well. After the speeches, the attendees took their message to the streets by marching around campus to show their dedication to these values.
The national event, sponsored at SU by the Advocacy Center, started at about 7 p.m. in Hendricks Chapel. It concluded with a ‘speak-out’ after the march that allowed victims of ethnic or gender abuse to share their stories.
Janine Savage spoke after Wolfe on behalf of the Student Association, which recently passed a resolution supporting the Vera House White Ribbon Campaign. Savage said not a day went by when she didn’t see somebody in SA wearing a white bracelet or ribbon supporting the organization. She said supporting this organization has helped her see how SA and other groups at SU can become more engaged on campus, especially in battling sexual violence.
‘I challenge that leadership is not a position,’ Savage said. ‘It is an action.’
Paul Ang, of the Advocacy Center, followed Savage in addressing the audience. His speech stressed the importance of seeing domestic violence as an issue that affects everybody on campus, not just women.
‘I truly, and honestly, believe the only way to end domestic and sexual violence in our society is for people of every gender identity, especially men, to unite together toward a common goal,’ Hank said.
The keynote speaker of the event was Tiffany Braley, LGBT outreach coordinator for Vera House in Syracuse.
Violence is happening all over the world at an epidemic level, Braley said. After sharing that her sister was murdered in a domestic violence incident, she encouraged everybody in the crowd to find a personal reason to end sexual abuse, both physical and verbal.
‘No matter what your reasons for being here,’ Braley said, ‘I hope you can find something personal that inspires you tonight that you can share with the campus.’
Amanda Lashua, a member of the Secular Student Alliance, said she thinks this event is an important way for women’s voices to be heard.
‘I think it is really important to support causes like this because women’s rhetoric is so central to politics right now,’ Lashua said. Lashua is trying to promote a nationwide rally for women’s reproductive rights April 28.
‘This sort of debate is connected to this event because a lot of this is about women’s power,’ Lashua said. ‘I feel for women who have been through these horrible situations in their lives. We don’t need to make a bad system worse.’
Emphasizing the importance of recognizing how verbal slurs against groups are becoming more commonplace was something Frank Urgiles, a senior information management and technology major, thought was most important.
‘It’s a cause we don’t take into consideration every day, and our generation is contributing to it,’ Urgiles said.
Nazanin Khajouee-Nejad, a senior biology major and one of the volunteers who helped organize the event, also said sexual abuse is a topic that deserves more attention.
‘I think abuse, any form of it, is a topic that hurts a lot of people,’ Khajouee-Nejad said.
Watching people of all different backgrounds take a stand against sexual violence is what Lindsey Lerman, a junior social work major who also volunteered at the event, said she liked best.
Said Lerman: ‘Seeing so many people taking a stand makes me hopeful that one day we won’t have to have this event.’
Published on April 12, 2012 at 12:00 pm
Contact Shannon: smhazlit@syr.edu
