The Center for Global Health and Sustained Dialogue addressed issues of women’s health and safety at the University Tuesday at a discussion titled “A Provocative Dialogue on Women’s Health: College and Beyond.”
Some of the key issues addressed at the dialogue included the aftermath following the release of the Rolling Stone article “A Rape on Campus” last November, general safety on Grounds, gender roles in Greek life and the effectiveness of this year’s required sexual assault module.
April Ballard, the associate director for programs at the Center for Global Health, said the Center has collaborated with Sustained Dialogue because the issues which would be addressed also contribute widely to global health concerns.
“Women’s health and women’s safety are valid global health issues and deserve attention within this context,” Ballard said. “Sustained Dialogue does a wonderful job of opening up discussion for things that need to be addressed.”
Tatiana Kalainoff, a third-year Architecture student and one of the Sustained Dialogue moderators at the event, said the timing of the discussion was key.
“I really think the University is ready to have these hard conversations,” Kalainoff said. “I think that last year everything was so fresh and there was not enough time to process everything — it was just event after event after event, and I don’t think there was really time for the conversation to expand outside of smaller, more intimate groups of trusted friends.”
Both graduate and undergraduate students — all female — participated in the discussion. Attendees discussed how the effectiveness of the sexual assault module might be overshadowed by being sent out with the Alcohol-Wise module, which many students have already done many times and tend to take casually.
Organizations such as Green Dot and Not on Our Grounds were discussed as opportunities to initiate dialogue and progress.
“I think it’s time to address what we can do as a community to move forward, since we are ready to open up and understand other views and share our own views as well,” Kalainoff said. “We can’t do it in an hour, but we can begin the discussion and begin to mitigate some of the views felt on our grounds.”
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