The month of October is known for bringing cool, crisp football weather and the excitement of Halloween. The lesser known significance of this month is the many awareness campaigns that it hosts: breast cancer, bullying, and dating and domestic violence. To commemorate the latter of these important campaigns, the Women’s Resource Center has been hosting several events on campus, including a candlelight vigil, the HopeLine donation drive and a speaker. This speaker, Debbie Norris, gave a presentation Wednesday night where she spoke about the domestic violence her daughter Heather suffered, which eventually led to her death in 2007.
As I entered Gorgas 205 at 6:30 p.m., I was pleased to see that there were so many students and faculty in the room. I sat down next to a young man working on homework. Before the presentation even started, he leaned over to me, exasperated, and asked, “How long is this supposed to last?” I replied probably until 8:30, and he huffed before settling back in his seat. When Debbie began to speak, my annoyance with the young man grew. He shifted in his chair, sighed audibly and had his flip-flopped feet casually up on a coffee table. He tugged at his T-shirt, adjusted his hat and looked around the room. I tried my best to reserve judgment, but my emotions peaked when he began messing with his phone just as Debbie was describing how her daughter was stabbed, put into a trash can, set on fire, cut up in pieces by a chainsaw and thrown into dumpsters around town by her abuser.
As tears streamed down my face from hearing the violence of this woman’s story, I was surprised to feel more apathy than anger toward this male stranger. I only found myself enraged after recounting the story to friends afterward. After all, did I expect anything different? This in itself is so telling. This man’s response to such blatant tragedy and injustice is a mirror of how women are treated both on our campus and in our society. You avert your eyes when confronted with women’s suffering, shift in your seat when you are forced to hear her side, and you occupy yourself otherwise when made to acknowledge something you don’t deem worthy of your time.
I certainly don’t mean to implicate that men never feel compassion for the trials of women, but for every one male college student barely managing to sit through a domestic violence lecture, there are more than likely dozens more who didn’t even bother to show up. As a former victim of dating violence, a female and an overall decent human being, I urge all students, especially those who identify as male, to at least be considerate of those who have marginalized and discounted experiences that differ from your own. After all, it could have been your mother, your sister or your first crush. Maybe now you will remember what October means.
Breanna Swims is a graduate student in gender and race studies.
