You see them handing out condoms outside of Ballentine. You see them rallying for a woman’s right to choose. Or maybe you’ve heard them make a presentation on sexual assault and rape.
These are the ladies of Women’s Student Association and Raising Awareness of Interactions in Sexual Encounters, and they are making the IU campus safer for us collegiettes ™ as well as our male co-eds.
WSA is responsible for getting Vagina Monologues, a play that encourages real and positive body image, on campus. Last year, they raised $4,500 for Middleway House, Bloomington’s domestic abuse shelter, and $500 for the V Day Spotlight Campaign, which went to the women and girls of the Dominican Republic.
This year, all of the proceeds for Vagina Monologues (7 p.m. on Feb. 11-12 and 3 p.m. on Feb. 13 in the Fine Arts Theater) go to the Middleway House and V Day Spotlight Campaign: Women and Girls of Haiti. Tickets are $8 for students and $10 for nonstudents. They can be purchased at the door, Burskirk-Chumley Box Office, or www.buskirkchumley.org.
“It’s so incredible,” says junior Miranda Ettinger, vice president of RAISE and director of activism for WSA. “You laugh and you cry. And it’s so empowering to hear women talking openly about their sexuality and bodies.”
Another one of WSA and RAISE’s accomplishments was the well-attended Take Back the Night event that takes place annually in the fall, and helps spread awareness to sexual assault and rape.
Miranda says the biggest problem on campus is sexual assault and the many misconceptions that go along with it including that can be excused with drinking. But she hopes the work that the women of WSA and RAISE have made a difference.
“Blame it on the Alcohol? The Truths and Myths of Sexual Assault” was a program where RAISE partnered up with the Prosecutor’s Office of Monroe County and gave presentations about consent and sexual assault to greek houses, the dorms, and the Bloomington community.
There was one presentation that Miranda will never forget. She was speaking to both men and women of the greek system and was discussing bystander intervention. And one fraternity member said, “I think we need to hold each other to the bro-level.”
“For him, that was his way of saying, ‘I think we need to hold each other accountable,” Miranda says. “It just made sense to him.”
It’s moments like these that make all of Miranda’s hard work worthwhile.
“It’s a beautiful thing when the idea of consent clicks for someone,” Miranda says.
Want to get involved? E-mail RAISE@indiana.edu and/or WSA@indiana.edu.