Name: Juliette Bauer
Year: sophomore
Major: women’s studies and English double major
Hometown: Erie, Pennsylvania
Favorite Food: “I worked over the summer at Taco Bell and fell in love with the greasy temptress known as the chicken chalupa, and the easiest way to my heart is bringing me one with extra sour cream.”
Fun Fact/Talent that no one really knows about you: “I think one fun fact about me that’s impressive is that in high school I was a state alternate for original oratory on my speech and debate team, but a more concerning fact is that I currently have like over 800 hours logged into the Sims 4.”
Her Campus: “What activities are you involved in at Bonaventure?”
Juliette Bauer: “I’m acting president of the Gender Equality Club and vice president of Knitty by Nature on our campus.”
HC: “What pushed you towards revamping the Voices club on campus?”
JB: “I decided to revive the gender equality club because I truly believe that feminism is the single most important social justice topic. It’s also definitely where I’ve, personally, grown my standards of justice, fairness and equality from. I also think there’s a lot of interest in the topic! Almost everyone I talk with from the SBU community is curious about what we’re doing and what our message is. Feminist issues affect everyone; male, female, rich, poor, disabled, ablebodied—everyone. So everyone should have a platform to speak out—I want to give that to people.”
HC: “With the current Sexual Assault Awareness Month campaign, what are you hoping as an outcome?”
JB: “My biggest dream for the rally is that we have a group of people, however many, having active and involved thoughts about sexual assault and how we can work together to change our culture. I think our culture spends a lot of time telling young people that because they aren’t rich or experienced or white or male or whatever that they can’t make a difference and I want to convince people that’s an outright lie. We can change things, even if we’re poor and inexperienced and not white and not male and not privileged. Things can change, and we can make them.”
HC: “What are your hopes for the club in the future?”
JB: “Next semester! At the start of the month we’re actually going to have a Women in Leadership campaign. We worked with Craig Melvin’s Photojournalism 2 photographers this past week to create images highlighting women in art, women in science, women in politics, women in sports and women in media. Then, during the first few months of next semester (probably late September into early October), we’re going to hold different activites (like seminars (interesting ones!) and movie nights etc,) for each group of women in leadership! I’m hoping we can have a night at the gallery in the Quick, for instance, with the female art historian professors and from the English department and etc.! We think it’ll be an amazing experience for freshmen, both male and female, to see women in positions of power and also to network!”
HC: “Advocacy seems to be something that you are pretty passionate about; how do you hope to incorporate this in your future, perhaps in the form of a career?”
JB: “Career-wise I essentially have no clue what I’m doing. I came to Bonas as JMC major and then the only things I felt passionate about in classes were feminist issues and politics, so I became a women’s studies and political science double major, then I realized I didn’t want to work from within the system so I winded up with women’s studies and English. Since that’s such a wide net of skills and choices it’s been overwhelming so far trying to decide what will work for me. I have interests in so many fields from domestic abuse to sexual assault to ecofeminism to militarism and just all these things that I feel so strongly about that it’s hard to choose what I want to become involved professionally with. But, in that same way that it complicates things I feel blessed that right now I can work a little bit at all of them. I want my career to allow me to do the same thing, however that manifests.
HC: “Absolute favorite thing about Bona’s?”
JB: “I think my favorite thing about Bonas has to be Bob’s Woods. Which sounds cheesy but I’ve never been a nature person and I’ve just had a lot of great experiences there. It’s so serene and I come from real close to Presque Isle in Erie which is like a nature reserve area, so my freshman year being on those paths really felt like home. I’m living in townhouse 33 next year so I’m excited to be able to walk them when I get stressed.
Also, my roommate. Jess and I are fiercely close and I think there’s such importance in women having other female-identifying friends who so aggressively support and believe in you while you feel the same about them. It’s hard, right now, to be navigating college and our culture and everything going on in the world, but with a friendship like we have it really eases things. I don’t know if that’s Bona’s-exclusive, but I think it has a lot to do with my look at feminism, too. I so strongly believe in genuine conversation and sharing between people to advocate for change. Fliers and buttons and banners are all nice and really important parts of change but there’s just nothing like having someone in your life you want to fight to make things better for. If there’s anything anyone feels about what we’re doing in this club and especially this week, I hope it’s a really strong pull to make things better for the people they love— and for most of Bonas, that’s all their fellow Bonnies.”
Photo courtesy of Juliette Bauer