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Volume 51, Issue 40 | Thursday, October 27, 2016 | ndsmcobserver.com
GRC hosts discussion on sexual assault Speakers share familial, personal experiences dealing with rape and the healing process
By RACHEL O’GRADY Associate News Editor
During Scheherazde Tillet’s sophomore year of college, she learned her older sister was a rape survivor. “She was raped her freshman year and then again her junior year, and I remember her telling me this very clearly,” Tillet said at the Gender Relation Center’s annual “A Time to Heal” dinner Wednesday night. “I was a sophomore at the time, and I remember feeling hopeless and angry and not sure what to do next, because I grew up in a home of silence, but I also grew up in a home that understood sexual violence.” Tillet said she turned to
photography to grapple with her sister’s experience with sexual violence and began to document her recovery through a series of photographs. “It’s such an abstract thing to think, you know, how do we capture someone’s healing process?” Tillet said. “The camera can be such a way that has harmed so many people, particularly with interpersonal violence, and it can be used against you.” As a result of the collection of photographs, Tillet teamed up with her sister, Salamishah, to create a documentary titled “Story of a Rape Survivor,” featuring the photos, along with see HEALING PAGE 4
RACHEL O’GRADY | The Observer
Gender Relations CenterDirector Christine Caron Gebhart speaks to students attending the “A Time to Heal” dinner Wednesday night at Club Naimoli in the Purcell Pavilion.
Panelists discuss race and SMC students, professor present educational opportunity at Seneca Falls By MEGAN VALLEY News Writer
By JORDAN COCKRUM News Writer
Over fall break, three Saint Mary’s students and a professor gave a presentation at the Seneca Falls Dialogues conference in Seneca Falls, New York, the site of the first U.S. women’s rights convention in 1848. Jamie Wagman, professor of history and gender and women’s studies, presented with junior Alison Tipton and seniors Katlynn Dee and Adrienne Whisman. “The conference itself was amazing,” Whisman said. “To be able to see the historical sights and birthplace of the United State’s women’s movement was unforgettable.” The Seneca Falls Dialogues occur every two years and aim to continue a discussion of women’s rights and feminism, the Seneca Falls Dialogue website said. “The Seneca Falls Dialogues are important in keeping the history of the location alive as well as in continuing the legacy of the people who fought for women’s rights,” Tipton said.
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Wagman first discovered the Seneca Falls Dialogue conference in emails from a Women’s Studies email forum. “Since I teach students about the famous 1848 first women’s conference in Seneca Falls, New York, I was immediately intrigued,” Wagman said in an email. After finding the Seneca Falls Dialogues, Wagman then invited students she thought would be interested in presenting at the conference. “I asked three excellent history majors in my U.S. history courses — both a survey class and a Women’s History class — if they wanted to present their own scholarship on gender history and visual culture at the conference,” Wagman said. The group gave a presentation titled “Constructing Sexuality and Fetishizing Women in American History: Debunking Myths in Popular Culture from Pocahontas to First Wave Reformers.” “To be able to talk about a lesser-known yet important area of
As part of student government’s Race Relations Week, David Robinson, former NBA player and father of student body president Corey Robinson; David Krashna, Notre Dame’s first AfricanAmerican body president; Christina Brooks, the City of South Bend’s diversity and inclusion officer; and Maria and Gabby Muñoz, undocumented students at Notre Dame spoke in a panel Wednesday night on racial justice in the context of opportunity. “Race Relations Week was an idea brought to our current student body president, Corey Robinson, by David Krashna, a 1971 graduate of the University and Notre Dame’s first AfricanAmerican student body president,” senior Rachel Wallace, student union representative to diversity council, said. “[Krashna] had a vision for creating a
space on our campus for honest discourse about racial justice from a variety of different perspectives.” Juniors Maria and Gabby Muñoz are studying chemical engineering at the University thanks to the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA), which allows undocumented residents to work and attend college legally in the U.S. They could not, however, apply for student loans, and many schools required them to apply as international students, forcing them to pay out-of-state tuition. “Aware of this, we applied to 18 different colleges, hoping that one of them would offer us enough financial aid,” Gabby Muñoz said. “Several of them rejected us because we were DACA students and others could not give us the financial support that we needed. Notre Dame was the only school that offered us full aid.” The Muñoz sisters said being DACA students also
see SENECA PAGE 4
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made it difficult to apply for internships and research positions, as most positions require applicants to be citizens. “At the beginning of our freshman year, studying abroad seemed out of the question, since we could run the risk of not being able to re-enter the country,” Maria Muñoz said. Krashna was the first and only African-American student body president until senior Corey Robinson was elected last year. Citing other pioneering students — including Frazier Thompson, the first African-American student athlete to earn a letter at the University and Goldie Lee Ivory, the first African-American woman to earn a degree from Notre Dame — he said all students need to succeed is the opportunity to do so. “Throughout the decades here at Notre Dame, other black students have matriculated and graduated from see RACE PAGE 4
VIEWPOINT PAGE 7
WOMEN’S Soccer PAGE 12
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