Photo courtesy of: University Communications and MarketingWomen's Center
With a mission of promoting awareness, education and advocacy about women, gender and diversity among the Ohio University community, the Women’s Center is poised for a big year and wishes for everyone to get involved.
The biggest event of the year, according to Dr. Geneva Murray, director of the Women Center, will take place on Friday, Oct. 13, when there will be a showing of the Monument Quilt in Peden Stadium.
Taking up the entire field, OHIO will become the first university in the United States to showcase the entire Monument Quilt in its football stadium.
The Monument Quilt is the largest national monument to rape survivors in the United States. It was pieced together by more than 1,000 survivors and tells the stories of sexual violence from immigrants, LGBTQ members and female veterans.
“The Monument Quilt is an incredibly powerful way to demonstrate that it is people the numbers are representing and that there is a multitude of experiences and stories that have to be included when talking about sexual violence,” Dr. Murray said. “The quilt is an amazing visual art-based representation of that.”
With controversial rape cases like the one that happened involving high school football players a few years ago in Steubenville, Ohio, the football stadium hosting the Monument Quilt is of special significance to Dr. Murray.
“I think that by showing the quilt in a football stadium, it makes the statement that one, our Athletics Department is supportive of showing the Monument Quilt here,” Dr. Murray said. “It doesn’t deserve to be tucked away somewhere. It deserves to have prominence in the ways in which it’s displayed and I think that by showing it in a football stadium we’re doing that.”
Dr. Murray said she hopes the entire community comes out to view the Monument Quilt, as sexual assault is not just a women’s issue, but an issue for everyone.
Next week, the Women's Center will host “Love Yourself Week." The week runs Oct. 16-20 and was created in partnership with the Women's Panhellenic Association, The Positivity Project, I AM THAT GIRL, and the Women's Center. Check out the schedule of events at https://www.ohio.edu/womenscenter/loveyourbody.cfm.
The Women’s Center has already hosted several big events this year, most notably the screening of “Pens to Pictures” and the National Eating Disorder Association (NEDA) Walk.
“Pens to Pictures,” which was presented at the Ohio University Lancaster Campus last spring, was brought to the Athena Cinema on Sept. 19. The filmmaking collaborative teaches and empowers incarcerated women to make their own short films, from script to screen.
On Sept. 30, the Women’s Center cosponsored the NEDA Walk in an effort to help raise funds and awareness for eating disorder advocacy, research, treatment and recovery.
For undergraduate women, there is the opportunity to gain professional mentorship as part of the Women’s Mentoring Program. The two-semester program is open to sophomores, juniors and seniors at OHIO. It pairs mentees with a female mentor in their personal and professional fields. Anyone interested in applying for next year's program can visit https://www.ohio.edu/womenscenter/mentor.cfm.
For more information about the Women’s Center, visit www.ohio.edu/womenscenter.