Rape Culture Activists

Rape Culture has been something I have grown to be very passionate during the last year. One of my senior projects in high school was rape culture in America. When I first learned about the movie The Hunting Ground, I was so interested. When I watched the movie over Thanksgiving, it reignited a new spark within me. I really look up to the two women who started this revolution. The documentary is about Andrea Pino and Annie E. Clark, two former University of North Carolina students who said that they were raped while attending UNC. These two women went through horrendous things while at UNC and the campus did nothing about it. While watching the documentary I learned almost every school you can think of does next to nothing to protect rape victims. The two women are changing the stigma that surrounds rape culture in this country. They have done  countless hours of research to help women and men who go to university that don’t really have any interest in helping them. The film focuses on about half a dozen victims who went to some of the “greatest schools in the nation” such as Berkley, UNC, Notre Dame, Harvard, and Florida State University. These victims were shamed and silenced at their universities. Andrea and Annie did enough work to convince the Departure of Education to take their Title 9 case. Since their case, women at over 100 universities have filed Title 9 cases. Which means over 100 schools are being investigated for their lack of attention to sexual assault cases. This is revolutionary. These two women have done amazing things when it comes to sexual assault on campuses all across America and they aren’t close to be done. They created a website to spread awareness called seestopact.org and I would highly recommend you check it out and see how you can get involved.

President Ross Reflection

How many people can say they met the President of their university? Not many, but I can! President George Ross took time out of his extremely busy schedule to visit my LDR 100 class this fall. Dr.Ross was truly a pleasure to listen to. He told us about his life growing up and why he is the man he is today. He didn’t have an easy up bring and defeated the odds. He went to Michigan State University and University of Alabama. He has had the opportunity to work at 6 universities. He mentioned that CMU just has something special about it. While in our class he answered many questions and got to know the freshmen LAS class.

This past week I also attended Pizza with the President. President Ross visits all the part of campus every fall to see what the students are thinking. We asked questions and got free food! I asked specifically about our med. school and physicians assistant program. He told me a few success stories about how we are competing with large universities. He told me to keep my dream alive of working high up in the medical field. It was awesome! He really motivated me to kick butt in my upcoming finals.

Connections Conference

Connections is a networking conference for student leaders from CMU. November 7th we all headed up to Traverse City to meet new people, create new friendships, get new ideas, and grow as leaders. We attended speakers, had some great food, and bonded in the waterpark.

We started out with a delicious lunch then headed to meet our home group for the conference. We discussed all the resources we have on campus and how we can utilize them to better our organizations. From there we listened to campus leaders on different topics.

My first session was time management. We discussed time wasters. I realized I am better at managing my time than I thought. I rarely waste my time doing things that are not important. I also attended a speaker that talked about having efficient meetings. This isn’t useful to me yet but in the future I hope I get the chance to lead an RSO on campus. My next speaker was about having fierce conversations. I really needed to attend this. I often find it hard to deal with confrontation. This session offered a way to deal with confrontation in an appropriate, respectful way. My last session was dancing through social change. We talked about how important art is to society. The great thing about art, either physically or fine arts, is everyone interrupts it differently.

After we attended all our choices sessions, we met back up with our home groups. We talked about how we can put what we had learned during the weekend to use on campus. We also got the chance to compliment people in our group on all the great things about them. Giving and receiving kind words really brought us together as a group.