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THE NEWS RECORD
UNIVERSITY OF CINCINNATI
NEWSRECORD.ORG
MONDAY, MARCH 9, 2015
Student Safety Board plans Safety Week events ahead of spring break CASSIE LIPP | CHIEF REPORTER
As University of Cincinnati students prepare for spring break, the Student Safety Board has prepared a week of safety awareness activities as a sendoff. Beginning today, each day this week will feature various free events that follow a different safety-related theme. All UC students are invited to participate and share their experiences on social media using the hashtag #besafeUC. “I’m excited for the whole week,” said Sam Schroeder, Student Safety Board external vice president. “We have put a lot of time into making this into an event that will raise discussion about safety on campus, so I’m looking forward to seeing how people will respond to that over social media and over small talk that they have on campus.” Schroeder said last year’s Student Safety Week focused on road safety. Activities raised awareness about texting and driving, drinking and driving and pedestrian safety. “This year we wanted to focus on several other issues that we felt were important and that different officers of Student Government thought were important, and then also working with public safety making sure we
were representing students’ issues within public safety,” Schroeder said. The theme for Monday is self-defense. Students are encouraged to wear jeans in honor of Denim Day, a day usually commemorated by the Peace Over Violence Organization in April to coincide with Sexual Violence Awareness Month. Denim Day began after an 18-year-old woman was forcibly raped in Italy by her driving instructor, according to Peace Over Violence, a sexual and domestic violence, child abuse, stalking and youth violence prevention center. The man who raped her was declared not guilty in court because the woman was wearing tight jeans on the day he raped her; the judge in the case argued that if the woman was wearing tight jeans, she would have had to help the man remove her jeans, and the sex would be consensual rather than rape. Women in the Italian Parliament started a peaceful protest to raise awareness for the case the following day by showing up to work wearing jeans. Denim Day became recognized in the U.S. in 1999. Schroeder said the Student Safety Board decided to celebrate Denim Day during Student Safety Week SEE SAFETY WEEK PG 3
OPINION: TV show reinforces consent culture with platform
PROVIDED
The UC Student Safety Board planned a variety of activities designed to spread safety awareness among students for the 2015 Student Safety Week.
PROFESSORS DISCUSS ROLES IN PREVENTING SEXUAL ASSAULT
FACULTY STAND UP AGAINST RAPE
MOLLY COHEN | CONTRIBUTOR
Through events and initiatives like the It’s On Us campaign, the University of Cincinnati is nurturing an understanding of sexual assault and striving to prevent it. The effort can be seen nationwide, and one television show in particular is putting the spotlight on consent culture. “Switched at Birth,” which follows the story of two young girls separated when they were born, uses its setting to explore important issues. Executive Producer Lizzy Weiss deserves recognition for using the show’s college setting to spread awareness and start conversations about sex safety on college campuses. TVGuide.com released an exclusive video Feb. 4 in which Weiss explained her reasoning behind telling a campus rape story. “It’s the number one conversation on campus right now,” Weiss said in the video. “How do we not do a story in which one of the girls deals with campus assault? … I hope it leads to that conversation — what can be done to prevent more of these kinds of assaults?” The media should use its platform to begin conversation and promote awareness about sexual consent and protection. “I think television should show the sober, verbal, ongoing part of consent,” said Lucille Eisenhard, a third-year liberal arts student and a peer advocate for the Women’s Center RECLAIM program, an advocacy program for sexual assault survivors. By reserving an extra few seconds of screen time to include words of consent, a condom or talk of the pill, directors are not only informing their viewers, they are also reinforcing smart sexual practices. “Have episodes about cultural consent,” said Hannah Fereshtehkhou, a first-year psychology student. “If shows were to write in the script an awkward scene where someone bumps their head … it’d be better for teens and adults; it would make the scene more believable.” Season four of “Switched At Birth” showed viewers its cliffhanger moment early in the season when character Bay wakes up nearly naked in a male friend’s bed after a party. Spoiler: We later find out she blacked out and had sex without her consent. The show does a great job of exploring the what-ifs, implications, confusions and gray areas that exist when drinking and sex combine in the SEE OPINION PG 3
MADISON SCHMIDT | PHOTO EDITOR
Simona Sharoni, a gender and women’s studies professor at the State University of New York Plattsburgh and co-founder of the national organization Faculty Against Rape, presented a workshop Tuesday in which students and faculty discussed the need for faculty to help prevent sexual assualt. CHELSEA ROBERTSON | CONTRIBUTOR
The University of Cincinnati kicked off Women’s History Month Tuesday with a Faculty Against Rape Workshop, an event with the goal of creating conversation surrounding the role faculty plays in preventing sexual assault on campus. The faculty attendance rate, however, was lower than expected. “I was really surprised at the low attendance and believe more faculty should have attended,” said Tiffany Walker, a second-year political science and journalism student. Walker was among the few students who gathered with faculty in Swift Hall to attend the workshop, which was sponsored by UC’s Charles Phelps Taft Research Center and the Department of Women’s Gender and Sexuality Studies. Simona Sharoni, a gender and women’s studies professor at the State University of New York Plattsburgh, serves as the co-founder of the national organization Faculty against Rape and led Tuesday’s
discussion. According to its mission statement, the organization was founded in the spring of 2014 with the intent of encouraging faculty to become involved in the awareness of campus sexual assaults and to support survivors while simultaneously supporting students and other faculty to do the same. “Faculty have not been visible in the movement to confront campus sexual assault as a group,” Sharoni said. “One of FAR’s objectives is to build a critical mass of faculty to support students in holding academic institutions accountable and making them safer, so we can do the job we were hired to do, that is, to teach and mentor students.” Anne Runyan, women’s, gender and sexuality studies professor at UC, organized the workshop, as well as the Gender, War and Accountability: Palestinian Resistance and Feminist Solidarity talk that took place later in the evening. Sharoni served as a guest speaker at both events.
Runyan said she also hoped that more faculty members had attended the event. The Faculty Against Rape Workshop was the third main event associated with the UC It’s On Us lecture series — part of a national campaign focused on campus sexual violence, which was brought to UC in November by the collaborative efforts of the Office of the Provost, UC’s Women’s Center, RECLAIM Peer Advocates, Student Government and other student leaders and advocates on and off campus. During the discussion, Sharoni argued that sexual assault advocacy should be included in the agenda of faculty senates just as it is in the agenda of faculty unions. Faculty should also be consulted on evolving university policies and ongoing sexual assault research, Sharoni said. During the workshop, Sharoni explained how faculty members throughout the country experience SEE WORKSHOP PG 3
Gentlemen’s Quarterly opens discussion on consensual sex among students PATRICK MURPHY | NEWS EDITOR
MADISON SCHMIDT | CHIEF PHOTOGRAPHER
Daniel Cummins, assistant dean of students, spoke frankly on how students must handle sexual interactions in terms of maturity and consent.
In light of several initiatives at the University of Cincinnati aiming to prevent sexual assault, Gentlemen’s Quarterly held a #ConsentB4Anything Consensual Sex Program to spread awareness about the importance of sexual consent being a verbal, sober and on-going occurrence. Gentlemen’s Quarterly, a UC group that seeks to be a support system for black male retention on campus, held the event Tuesday in Swift Hall. Led by speakers Bill Richey, lead detective of UC’s Police Department, and Daniel Cummins, assistant dean of students and director of judicial affairs, the program gave students the opportunity to have an open dialogue about their feelings toward sexual assault, especially in regard to consent and drinking culture. “Many folks can do many things [drunk], but that doesn’t make it right or OK,” Cummins said. Richey also posed four questions that must be asked in regard to sexual relations: Am I doing the right thing? Am I doing this at the
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right time? Am I doing this in the right way? Am I doing this for the right reason? Other areas of discussion included the necessity of verbal consent to sex. “Things start happening, they’re OK with it, and then all of a sudden they don’t necessarily tell you no — because they don’t have to tell you no — but all of a sudden they’re not participating anymore,” Richey said.“That should throw up a flag saying, ‘Hey, they’re not OK with this anymore.’” Cummins emphasized that consent can be withdrawn at any point in the interactions between two people and that the individuals involved must respect the decisions of his or her partner. “I understand that that can be confusing; I understand that that could send mixed messages,” Cummins said.“As adults we have to be clear on our choices; we have to be clear on what’s being communicated between you and your partner.You have to be clear on how far this contact is going to go.” SEE GQ CONSENT PG 3
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