This Friday and Saturday, the Women’s Center will sponsor the annual campus production of Eve Ensler’s “The Vagina Monologues,” a play in which women speak about their complex relationships with their bodies. The performance will be part of a worldwide effort to raise awareness and funds to help stop violence against women.
The event is part of Ensler’s V-Day organization, which operates in 130 countries and has raised $70 million over the past 10 years. The group’s mission is to end rape, battery, incest, sexual slavery, and genital mutilation around the world. Money raised at the SMU production will be donated to a local shelter for abused women and children. SMU is lucky to be a part of the efforts of such an inspiring charity, and The Daily Campus encourages the entire school to attend.
Today, violence against women remains one of the most widespread human rights abuses in the world. According to the United Nations, one in three women will be beaten or otherwise abused by an intimate partner at some point in her life. One in five will be raped or subjected to a rape attempt. An estimated 130 million women and girls alive today have undergone genital mutilation. The statistics go on and on.
It’s happening here in America too. The National Center for Injury Prevention and Control reports that American women suffer 4.8 million physical assaults from intimate partners every year. Men aren’t immune from domestic violence either. The Center for Disease Control and Prevention pegs the number of men subjected to domestic abuse annually at 2.9 million. It’s shameful that in this country and in this day and age, so many people live in fear in their own homes.
Violence against women is especially prevalent on college campuses. A report commissioned by the Department of Justice in 2000 projected that almost 5% of college women are the victims of rape or attempted rape each year. It concluded that up to one quarter of women might be sexually assaulted in their time at college. Needless to say, this is not an acceptable number.
Things don’t have to be this way. Violence against women can be stopped. The first step is to raise awareness and empower women. As sophomore Aneesha Kudtarkar, the director of SMU’s production of “The Vagina Monologues,” points out, “As girls on a college campus, we’re taught not to talk about ‘down there,’ so when something bad does happen, women don’t say anything—they bear the burden alone. ‘The Vagina Monologues’ is about ending the culture of silence around acts of violence committed against women and girls in our own communities.”
The Daily Campus applauds the Women’s Center and all those involved in this year’s production of “The Vagina Monologues” for their hard work at this important cause.
If you go: “The Vagina Monologues” will be performed at 7:00 PM on Friday and Saturday in the Hughes-Trigg Theatre. The price of admission is $5 for students, faculty, and staff and $10 for the Dallas community.
