TomandCandice.com

United

Posted by Tom on December 3, 2009 at 12:11 am

I thought I’d talk for a second about some of the work I’ve been doing at York over the past few weeks.

York has developed a reputation of being a somewhat “dangerous” school. Every couple of weeks you’ll see a bunch of these posted around:

which are basically security bulletins, saying that something bad happened to someone on campus during the previous night. More often than not the victims of these events are women.

So a campaign called United Against Violence Against Women started recently, aiming to make our campus (and all other university and college campuses) safe for everyone. In the campaign we talk about the tragedy that occurred in 1989 in Montreal, when 14 women were killed at their school, simply because they were women in fields that were male dominated. Ridiculous, right? Add this to the ridiculousness of women not feeling safe enough to walk around their own campus at night, and we’ve got a big problem.

In an effort to educate people, we spent today talking to students about the events that happened in 1989 and how students can help make their campus a little safer. We also got petitions signed and collected personal statements from students to deliver to the president of the university, to make sure that he and the rest of the admin know that there is a problem that needs to be addressed.

We closed off the day with a short rally/vigil, where a couple of speakers spoke about the importance of all students helping their fellow students make the campus a better place.

As a male, sometimes it’s difficult/awkward to get involved with campaigns like this… I’m never sure where my place is. Is it weird to have some guy trying to talk to students about violence against women? Should it just be women as the face of the campaign?

What I need to remember is that this is a fight for all students. Someone mentioned tonight “An injury to one student is an injury to all students”, and she’s got a point. I know that when I see one of those info bulletins as I stumble to my morning class, I shake my head every time, feeling for the victim and feeling a little angry at whoever made that person into a victim.

This school has plenty of issues, no doubt, but this is one that students can actually take a stand on and do something about it. For once, this isn’t the school administration injuring students, it’s students injuring students. And that just feels ridiculous to me.

…and with that out of the way, I’m sure Candice’s post tomorrow will be much more cheerful. We’re putting up our Christmas tree tomorrow, so I’m sure there will be pictures to post soon!

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