UNIVERSITY OF SOUTH CAROLINA
THURSDAY, APRIL 12, 2018
VOL. 110, NO. 24 ● SINCE 1908
Masculinity workshops suffer from low turn-out Hannah Dear @HANNAHCDEAR
Healthy masculinity workshops teaching about the roles of masculinity in society and relationships have been held throughout the spring semester. The workshops started on Jan. 31, but very few people have attended, sometimes including the instructor. First-year business student Logan Steffke was looking forward to the seminar — until he realized the workshop leader wasn’t there. “It’s a prett y cool seminar and I was assigned through my speech class to write a one to two page paper on a live presentation,” Steffke said. “This one seemed like I’d get the most useful information.” Wo r k s h o p s w e r e h e l d f o u r t i m e s throughout the semester. The very first work shop had a n i n st r uc tor a nd one participant. By the last workshop, the one Steff ke attend, there was one interested student and no instructor. “I walked in here at five,” he said. “I said ‘don’t even tell me right now’ I said ‘don’t even tell me this isn’t going to happen’ because I’m gonna have to email my teacher, and I don’t want to have to ask for like an extension on my assignment, but listen I came to the seminar ... I have stuff to do from 7:30 all night tonight.” Steff ke did not believe the topic of the workshop was the reasoning behind low attendance. Instead, he thought the event wasn’t promoted enough to students. “I think it’s about the general awareness of these seminars going on,” Steffke said. “I think it’s the fact that people aren’t on the day to day actively looking through the Carolina event calendar online to see what seminars they can go to.” Even w it hout at tend i ng work shops, students around campus have developed their own opinions about what healthy masculinity means in reference to themselves and society. “I would define healthy masculinity as not just the physical expression of strength but the actual strength of a man — of who he is,” said Joshua Helms, a fourth-year religious studies student. “Being confident in who he is as a person and how he represents himself as he goes into a room and being able to be that steady hand in knowing when to speak up for others and knowing also when to be quiet.” Dav id Flowers, a t hird-year English student, believes that men ineffectively fit their masculinity into society because they do not understand the privileges they have that the other half of the population do not. “I think it’s having the wherewithal and having the self-awareness to know placement in societ y and to be aware of one’s own privilege,” Flowers said. Many men on campus believe healthy masculinit y fits into societ y along with healthy femininity creating equal gender roles. They think healthy masculinity is not anti-feminism, but it also allows men to be proud of who they are. “I think it goes hand in hand ... with healthy femininity,” Helms said. “I think both roles have the equal things they can bring to the table, and there’s no one over the other.” Another aspect of healthy masculinity, recognized by students like first-year nursing st udent Lahsen Grich, is recog n izing members of t he LGBTQ com mu n it y. He emphasizes that men need to be more comfortable in who they are regardless of their sexual identity. “I guess it’s just being able to express yourself how you want and not caring what other people think,” Grich said. Healthy masculinity workshops are meant to instill these ideas in men to make them more comfortable in who they are while not detracting from the role of women in society. Future workshops that are similar could ensure that other male students at USC carry with them an understanding of what masculinity means. “It’s time that men are able to go back to what masculinity is. I think, nowadays we have a lot of boys, and they don’t understand what it means to be masculine,” Helms said. “We have a bunch of boys that never become men and not necessarily a fault of their own, but a fault of the society where society has failed them, where we as a nation has failed them, as universities we have failed them, in families we have failed them.”
Shreyas Saboo / THE DAILY GAMECOCK
Greek students try foods from various countries and cultures on Greene Street in celebration of Greek Week.
Greek Week brings multicultural cuisine Joseph Leonard @THEGAMECOCK
Hungry students lined Greene S t r e e t o n We d n e s d a y f o r a Multicultural Food Fest as part of USC’s Greek Week. Students went through a buffet-style line and were able to pick from Middle
Eastern, Asian and Hispanic food while learning more about Greek life’s impact on campus. The food was made by a mixture of soror it ies, f rater n it ies a nd other vendors who brought their own cultural food to the table for students. Syd ne y Ja ne s , a t h i rd-y e a r marketing and management student and organizer of the Multicultural Food Fe s t , e m p h a s i z e d the importance of bringing all t he Greek let ter organizations toget her. She sees events like Food Fest as a chance for Greek l i fe to e x pa nd it s reach on campus and connect across the four different Greek councils. “O u r t agl i ne i s
‘together we stand,” Janes said. “As a Greek community, we’re so much bigger than whatever council we’re part of ... This is an opportunity for us to show each other that we care about each other.” Natalia Osorio, a t hird-year chemistry student and president of t he Mu lt ic u lt u ra l Greek Council said it’s “very important” to experience different cultures a n d t h a t c o l l a b o r a t i n g w it h multicultural Greek organizations is a great way to do so. “You learn a lot of different things about the different organizations you work with,” Osorio said. “It’s really good to get to know them, ‘cause you learn more about them, you learn more about yourself and how you handle being around other people that are different from you.” Read more about Greek Week at www.dailygamecock.com
Shreyas Saboo / THE DAILY GAMECOCK
Outreach set on sexual assault awareness Meghan Crum @MEGCRUM24
Denim Day began 19 years ago in Italy when the Italian Supreme Court overturned a decision about a sexual assault case because the victim was wearing jeans. The jeans were tight, and the justices believed that the victim had to have helped the assaulter remove her jeans, suggesting that she gave consent. The next day, the women of the Italian Parliament went to work wearing jeans, protesting the decision. Now, Denim Day is an important part of Sexual Assault Awareness Month, and at USC it will be the closing event on April 25. Jennifer Taylor, program coordinator for bystander intervention, hopes to use the month to reach out to students and make them aware of the Sexual Assault and Violence Intervention & Prevention services in the Thomson Building — specifically the organization’s confidentiality. The events were tailored to students so that students do not have to speak up to participate, but can still interact with others and learn more about the issue. “I think the biggest thing, really, that we want from students is for them to just have conversations,” Taylor said. “We want this to be an opportunity to really kind of look at their own conceptions.” Third-year psychology student Regan Butler believes the campaign is crucial to the health and safety of students on campus. “A lthough that we don’t want to think that it’s happening on our campus, we know that it is,” Butler said. “I think it’s good to bring awareness.” With movements such as #MeToo and #TimesUp growing their influence on social media, Taylor wants to keep conversations surrounding sexual assault and consent alive on campus. “A lot of stuff that went unsaid in the past, those problems ... didn’t stop existing because people weren’t talking about them. They were still sort of just under the surface,” she said. Taylor values the feedback of students about the activities planned for the month, and hopes that students will participate, create relationships and teach each other
something, whether they are a survivor or a supporter. “We also really just want to make sure that students feel supported, and that they have the opportunity to also offer that support to one another,” Taylor said. “Students working on behalf of one another and working to support one another is very powerful.” On Wednesday, the Office of Multicultural Student Affairs held a table on Greene Street for an Anti-Street Harassment event. Students were able to write on a chalkboard different words of encouragement and words that had been called to them on the street. “I feel like street harassment is something that happens all the time, but nobody really talks about it,” said Tayler Simon, the organizer of the event and a graduate student in social work. Walk a Mile in their Shoes will take place on Thursday, and the Clothesline Project, where students will be able to decorate a shirt to recognize victims and hang it on a clothesline on Davis Field, will go on from April 16 through April 19.