SU Rising, held Thursday at Hendricks Chapel, provided an opportunity for a much-needed community dialogue about violence against women.

Sexual assault is often a hard subject to talk about, but it cannot be ignored. Though it does not affect many of us directly, it is happening on our campus.

One-in-five female college students experiences some sort of sexual assault in her college years, and 1-in-33 male college students experiences the same. Male perpetrators commit sexual assault between six to eight times.

Women dominated the audience, while men were few in attendance. The event called for an end to violence against women, but when the average male perpetrator on a college campus commits an act of sexual violence six to eight times, perhaps more men needed to be a part of this conversation.

President Barack Obama has recognized the persistence of the issue, and applauded the U.S. Senate in his State of the Union address for passing the Violence Against Women Act on Feb.12. Now, the act must pass in the U.S. House of Representatives.

Congress failed to reauthorize the act last year. This important piece of legislation makes the sentences harsher for perpetrators, and guarantees women the right to civil proceedings. House Republicans blocked the act because it expanded protection for victims who are undocumented immigrants, Native Americans and lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender victims.

The panel of commentators at SU Rising addressed this issue by discussing the influence of gender stereotypes on men. For the most part, our society expects men to be aggressive and indifferent. From an early age, we teach boys to like certain toys and act tough when they don’t need to. We make excuses for violent behavior without addressing the actual behavior.

We even reinforce these stereotypes when we ask same-sex couples who wears the pants in the relationship. This question implies someone in the relationship has more control or is more like the man, instead of seeing each partner as equals. Without knowing it, we set up unrealistic standards for gender roles.

When we see or hear something wrong, we need to say something. We need to stop being apathetic about the problems we think don’t affect us.

As college students, we are a reflection of what our future society is going to look like. Everyone has the potential to bring change if they are truly dissatisfied with society.

These past few years, we have seen people our age rise up against authoritative regimes and economic inequality. They have initiated revolutions and demanded change. We must also demand change from the social institutions and government structures that are equally responsible for reinforcing the rigid gender roles our society exhibits.

Stopping violence against women may seem like a daunting task, considering the global scale of the problem. It’s not going to stop right away, but that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t try.

One of the first steps is encouraging dialogue. We need to open up a dialogue to talk about issues like sexual violence and gender stereotypes so that we can make progress toward decreasing their negative effects.

Rahimon Nasa is a sophomore magazine journalism and international relations major. Her column appears weekly. She can be reached at [email protected] and followed on Twitter at @rararahima.

Published on February 18, 2013 at 1:00 am