Last week I attended Take Back the Night on our campus forum.  This event gave survivors of sexual violence and other members of the University community to speak about the problem of sexual violence on college campuses.  The event structure was an open mic so student could come speak to the crowd on their own personal experiences or some students brought essays or poems they had written about the problem of sexual violence.

This event made me realize how prevalent sexual violence is especially on college campuses.  While I thought I knew how awful sexual violence is, hearing first hand accounts from members of our University community gave me new perspective of the horrors of this issue.  This event empowered survivors to be able to share their story about a topic that is often overlooked and uncomfortable to talk about.  The overwhelming majority of sexual violence is against women and I think men have a duty to be active bystanders as we all have the ability to help stop sexual violence before it happens.

This event provided powerful first hand accounts that I hope inspired every person who attended to become more actively engaged in combating the problem of sexual violence, specifically on college campuses.  I was unaware of how prevalent this issue was on our own campus.  I went through Spiders for Spiders training with my fraternity last year and I hope this event encourages others to attend similar training and become more active bystanders