Men With Integrity concludes 24-hour vigil against rape (Photo by Ben Briscoe, The Daily Campus)
An open forum discussion on domestic violence in Hughes-Trigg Thursday night co-hosted by SPARC and Men With Integrity capped off “24 Hour Truce,” an event aimed at reducing violence against women.
According to MWI Director sophomore Daniel Liu, “24 Hour Truce” was intended to “bring life to the frightening and almost unreal statistics that across the globe every three minutes a woman is beaten and every five another is raped.”
In order to achieve this goal, MWI, which was only granted organizational status by Student Senate last April, decided to host an event modeled after a 1983 speech by feminist
Andrea Dworkin in which she called for a “24 hour truce during which there is no rape.”
The campus wide truce began Wednesday at 6 p.m. with a performance by a local campus alternative rock band and continued through the night with readings of Dworkin’s speech by campus leaders including Student Senators Russ Taylor and Michelle Wigianto.
By the time students returned to the main quad Thursday morning, MWI had put out more than 150 white and purple flags lining walkways in order to raise awareness about the truce.
Throughout the truce MWI also manned two tables to field questions about domestic violence both on campus and nation wide,
“When you have close friends coming to you saying they have been abused or raped, it makes you want to do something about it,” Liu said. “It also makes you want to tell everyone else what is going on, so that something will be done. That’s what we hoped to achieve with this event.”
Overall Liu feels the response to the event was positive and that the club was able to achieve its goal.
“’24 Hour Truce’ is just one small step towards the larger goal of continuing campus wide movement to help stop domestic violence and sexual abuse,” Liu said. “If this simply gets a dialogue started on campus about the issue then we will be able to call it a success, and I think it is safe to say that the event has done that.”
