On January 30th, 20 students gathered in the Reynolds Club South Lounge to not only partake in a discussion on slut-shaming and rape culture, but to also welcome a new RSO to campus.
Known as World Today, the new discussion-based RSO aims to provide a platform for students and faculty to come together in a bid to share their views on relevant issues. Founded by fourth year students Roxane Picard and Dinali de Silva, World Today seeks to create an open dialogue between each discussion’s attendees regardless of their nationality, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and other categories that frequently divide members of society.
“[The university] has a lot of separate organizations, but there’s no platform for all of them to come together and discuss an issue,” explains de Silva.
“The discussions that do occur are usually in a speaker series or lecture format, where you have a member of faculty presenting his research with maybe a Q&A at the end. But there’s no platform for everyone to gather and have an actual discussion.”
Picard and de Silva’s insistence on a discussion-based RSO stemmed from their formative high school years when they attended schools that were part of the United World Colleges (UWC) system. Founded in 1962 by German educationalist Kurt Hahn, the UWC operates on the idea that young people need to operate as a united force to overcome the challenges of the post-WWII world. Hahn focused specifically on young people, as he believed that they were still young enough to make a difference, but old enough to develop their own informed opinions.
Now with 12 colleges in 12 countries around the world, the UWC has transformed into a highly respected education system known for opening its students’ eyes to the world around them. Picard, originally from Scotland, took part in the UWC program at the Mahindra United World College in India, while de Silva moved from Sri Lanka to the Red Cross Nordic United World College in Norway. It was during these high school years that Picard and de Silva were exposed to what is not their main inspiration behind World Today.
“Every week, our whole college would have these discussions and every student from every country could give their perspective on an issue that was important to them,” remembers Picard. “We were a class of 200 students from 80 countries, so you’d get exposed to a lot of ideas that you may never have really thought about.”
“The discussions we had in high school really opened our eyes to all the different views that people could have about all these issues in the world, and that’s something we wanted to bring to UChicago,” says de Silva.
With that in mind, Picard and de Silva founded World Today whose first discussion event, SLUTS, was held in late January.
“We chose slut-shaming and rape culture as our first discussion because it’s a very relevant topic today,” says Picard. “There’s been a lot of attention recently in the media, with the gang rape incident in India and the rape case in Steubenville.”
But, the World Today founders add, the topic is also very relevant to college life.
“Even if you’re not talking about rape, which is sadly pretty common on college campuses, you still have the hookup culture and girls calling each other things like ‘slut’ without really thinking of what the words mean,” explains de Silva. “And then there’s that double standard between a man and a woman’s actions when it comes to sex. The woman is constantly perceived in a negative light even if she often has the same reasons behind her actions as a man does.”
Event attendees were joined by Vickie Sides from the university’s Resources for Sexual Violence Prevention program. Sides chimed in with her own professional insight, a complement to the students’ own views.
The event was deemed a success, and Picard and de Silva hope to schedule two discussions per quarter on issues affecting the local and global community. While the RSO is still in its infancy, we’ll be on the lookout for how the discussions evolve in the future.