The first day of October marks the beginning of Domestic Violence Awareness month, and the Women’s Center is partnering with groups at NC State throughout the month to try and teach campus visitors about the realities of domestic violence in the U.S.
The Women’s Center, in partnership with the Men in Social Work, will be introducing the theme of the month to NC State with the first of four These Hands Don’t Hurt events on the Brickyard Thursday, according to Otis McGresham, the assistant director for interpersonal violence services and advocacy at the Women’s Center.
“We are trying to show people what domestic violence looks like on a college campus,” McGresham said.
At the These Hands Don’t Hurt event, people passing by the set-up will be able to put their handprints on a tarp as a pledge to treat their relationship partners with respect and to not use their hands with the intention of harming another person.
Omega Phi Alpha, a service sorority at NC State, will be on the Brickyard Thursday with the Women’s Center offering to dye attendees’ hair purple, the color of Domestic Violence Awareness month.
Rachel Peterson, the service director of Omega Phi Alpha and a junior in agricultural science, said she hopes people will see the color purple in people’s hair around campus and pay attention to the meaning behind it.
The event on Thursday will take place from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.
“We are going to be making people aware of what a healthy relationship and what an unhealthy relationship looks like,” Peterson said.
Many people believe domestic abuse is only physical abuse. However, domestic abuse can come in different forms, such as being overly controlling and verbally abusive, Peterson said.
“There are a lot of different aspects that I think a lot of people don’t think about,” Peterson said. “This is about giving power back to people. We want to tell them ‘No you don’t need to take that, you are a human being. You can stand up for yourself.’”
The These Hands Don’t Hurt events will be held four times throughout Domestic Violence Awareness month at varying locations around campus.
On Oct. 15, the Women’s Center will bring the event to the Oval on Centennial Campus, and it will be at the veterinary school on Oct. 27 and 29, according to McGresham.
For the last two weeks in October, the Women’s Center will present its Silent Witnesses exhibit in Talley Student Union, which is modeled after a national campaign that attempts to share the stories of victims who have lost their lives due to acts of domestic violence.
The witnesses are red life-sized plywood cutouts of a uniform, non-gendered shape with a synopsis about the victim written on each witness.
While the national campaign often gives its silent witnesses genders, McGresham said the Women’s Center wanted to keep it gender-neutral. Also, all the witnesses in Talley will be stories from victims in North Carolina and almost all of them will be victims about the same age as most college students.
“We wanted to focus on traditionally college-aged range to connect to the college population,” McGresham said.
The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence states most cases of domestic violence are never reported to police, an estimated 1.3 million women are victims of physical assault by an intimate partner each year and 85 percent of domestic violence victims are women. In addition, females aged 20 to 24 years are at the greatest risk of nonfatal violence from a partner.
While domestic violence has historically been a problem in the U.S., the topic of domestic violence has been prominent in the news over that past few months due to high-profile cases, such as that of NFL Ravens running back Ray Rice, who was caught on video violently beating his wife in an elevator until she was knocked unconscious.
