Valentine’s Day isn’t just a day for romance – it’s a day that reminds everyone of the importance of love and caring for one another, whether you’re in a relationship or not. Luckily for us, the JCU community does a fantastic job of showing love for one another. Between Rhapsody Blue and their annual sale of roses that come with a serenade, and Panhellenic Council and IFC partnering to sell carnations, another group was sitting in the atrium on Valentine’s Day with a different message of love.
Her Campus JCU partnered with Megan Dzurec and the peer health educators, along with the organization Students Empowering Women (SEW) to spread the message that everyone deserves love. While Her Campus passed out chocolate that had inspirational quotes and facts about mental health, we were also helping SEW with their participation in an event called 1 Billion Rising.
1 Billion Rising is a campaign to bring awareness to and help prevent relationship violence, violence against women, and also calls for justice for crimes against women. The goal of the campaign is to get 1 billion people to “rise for justice” on February 14th each year. There are participants in 207 countries, including places such as Egypt and India, where there have been a rise in incidents such as gang rape in recent years. 1 Billion Rising also works toward the idea of college campuses being safe places for women and the ultimate goal of no sexual assaults on campuses.
While the standard 1 Billion Rising event is a large gathering of people dancing in a public place, or holding a flash mob (JCU did this last year), SEW went a different direction on campus this year. The theme this year was “Make a chain to break the chain.” Students were asked to sign their name on a piece of paper that either said “I vow to break the chain”, or they had the option of picking a piece of paper that had various saying on them such as “___ deserves love” or “____ is strong”, and they were able to write the name of one of their friends. The pieces of paper were then stapled together into a paper chain, and the chains are hung around the atrium as a reminder to help end violence against women.
The chains represent the idea of people banding together and rising up for justice for women. They also create a fantastic visual of the sheer amount of people on JCU’s campus alone that are proponents of ending relationship violence and sexual assault worldwide and on college campuses. In addition, the links of chain that held the positive statements that everyone deserves love and that everyone is beautiful and strong in their own way help to remind those that may be victims of sexual assault that they deserve more than that, and that they deserve love, not violence.
Remember, Valentine’s Day isn’t just about your significant other. Valentine’s Day is about loving your neighbor and yourself. As women, it does us good to be reminded that we are strong and beautiful, and that we do not deserve violence. We deserve love, and not just on Valentine’s Day, but every day of the year. So “rise up for justice” and stand with 1 billion people in this world that believe in love.
Source: http://www.onebillionrising.org/
Photo Credit: Allison’s own photo