Nationally, October is recognized as Domestic Violence Awareness Month. Domestic Violence Awareness Month (DVAM) is a national campaign dedicated to raising awareness about domestic violence and every year organizations and individuals unite across the country for a national effort to uplift the needs, voices, and experiences of survivors.
For DVAM 2024, the Domestic Violence Awareness Project is proud to build on the theme Heal, Hold & Center, first launched in 2023.
This DVAM and beyond, we must work together, embrace the many cultural ways we can
heal from violence and oppression,
commit to holding space for survivors,
and center those most marginalized in all of our efforts to end gender based violence.
As we heal, hold, and center survivors, especially those navigating anti-Blackness and other systems of oppression, we remain grounded in the knowledge that there is no survivor justice without racial justice.
The Survivor Advocacy and Feminist Education Center has rephrased “Domestic Violence Awareness Month” to “Relationship Violence Awareness Month”, as we believe the term better reflects experiences of young adults who experience violence outside of a domestic and/or marital framework.
This year, we will be joining the Domestic Violence Awareness Project in the Heal, Hold, & Center theme through various programs that focus on the margins. To connect this theme into our Grow Consent Culture Campaign we have chosen to use the Rose.
Throughout history, roses have garnered many meanings. It is considered to be a symbol of the union between the divine feminine and masculine energies with the soft petals representing the nurturing and compassionate aspects of the feminine, while the sturdy stem and thorns symbolize the strength and protection associated with the masculine.
Relationship Violence emanates from the norms that are imposed upon all living beings through socially constructed categories of gender, sexuality, race, class, status, disability, and various other categories that are formed through a settler colonial, White Supremacist Heteropatriarchial binary situated in oppositional difference. These rotted roots inform every interpersonal interaction and can produce the most severe and intimate forms of relationship violence.
To break free of this violence, we see the rose as a guide to embracing the vast and deep spectrum of the feminine and masculine within ourselves, allowing us to expand into our fullest selves and strengthening our awareness of living as complex and beautiful human beings. The rose offers healing, inviting us to embrace our uniqueness, love ourselves unconditionally, and find solace in the gentle reminder that we have the innate ability to bloom.
The rose is instructive in our theme by encouraging us to
Heal: In plant medicine, roses offer a wide range of healing capabilities. The Rose is cardiotonic, helping to strengthen both the physical and emotional heart. Rose can help ease sorrow, grief, heartbreak, heartache, and trauma. It is also incredible at addressing inflammation in the body, a reality that many survivors live with.
Hold: When a rose falls, the thorns and stem are still left standing as gentle protectors. While the fallen rose may be seen as weak, the thorns and stem remind us to not underestimate the strength in vulnerability and the importance of cultivating the next bud that sprouts, taller than the one before it. Embracing these thorns with grace and resilience allows us to fully appreciate the beauty that arises from overcoming adversity.
Center: Roses come in an astonishing variety of shapes and sizes. Few flowers equal the impact of roses when planted en masse, but it is the individual bloom that makes it the flower of all the flowers. These blooms come in widely diverse shapes, sizes, colors, and scents, all uniquely different and equally as beautiful reminding us that difference is to be embraced, understood and treasured in its depth of expression and experience. This reminds us that to center the margins means to hold difference as delicately and intentionally as we would a rose.
We hope you’ll join us in many of our programmatic offerings this year, taking what you need and leaving with a felt sense of support and community on behalf of SAFE Center Professional and Student Staff.
We are so excited to bring two faculty speakers to our RVAM programming this year! The first discussion will be with Dr. Erin O’Callaghan, Associate Professor of Sociology.
Erin’s research broadly is rooted in abolitionist feminisms and critical criminology, with a specific focus on sexual violence and gender-based harm in two main areas: substance-involved sexual violence and sexual violence in the workplace. Based on her expertise and research, Erin’s talk will explore the ways in which Relationship Violence harms everyone in community and why it’s imperative that everyone play a part in dismantling systems and cultures of violence.
October 6:00 – 7:30 p.m., LSC 386, Drop-In, Dinner Provided, For accommodations please email SafeCenter@colostate.edu
The Petal Project is a ceramics workshop created by Joanne Kirves, who is a local ceramics and sculpture artist whose work focuses on healing as a survivor. We are thrilled to have Joanne bring her workshop to campus for our RVAM programming. The workshop entails a writing practice followed by the creation of a unique rose petal with survivor declarations. Joanne will glaze and bake the petals in her personal studio to create an interactive art installment and will return to display the petals so that survivors can cut down and keep a petal as a reminder of the community supporting them.
October 9th, Different Session Times Offered from 10:00 a.m.- 2:30 p.m., LSC 386,
Limited Space, RSVP required
SAFE Center is partnering up with the Human-Animal Bond in Colorado, part of Colorado State University’s School of Social Work in bringing fluffy companions to support destressing and the opportunity for students to explore the healing powers of the human-animal bond in trauma recovery.
October 9th, 4:00 – 5:00 p.m. SAFE Center LSC (LSC 234), Drop-In
Rosas de Recuerdo: Honrando a las Vidas Robadas por el Feminicidio”
/ Remembrance Roses: Honoring the Lives stolen by Femicide
Walk Through Exhibition and Vigil
In collaboration, SAFE Center , PRIDE, and El Centro invite the campus community to an interactive exhibition to experience, engage with, and remember the personal stories and memories of the people whose lives have been lost to the rampant Femicide. This exhibition aims to humanize these individuals, emphasizing their vibrant lives and the profound impact of their loss on their families and communities, while also highlighting the intersectionality of femicide.
This space is designed for attendees to participate in a rose petal ritual in an effort to foster empathy and creates a space for collective mourning and reflection, while inspiring collective action to dismantle the cultural norms, practices, and policies that enable and encourage gender based violence.
October 15th, 4:00- 6:00 p.m., LSC Longs Peak Room, Drop-In and Walk Through
Following the Petal Project Workshop, local artist Joanne Kirves will return to install the ceramic rose petals made by participants. Light Refreshments will be provided.
October 23rd, 5:00 p.m., SAFE Center LSC (LSC 234), Drop-In
For accommodations please email SafeCenter@colostate.edu
RVAM Faculty Presentation- Romanticizing Red Flags: The Sensationalizing of Relationship Violence and Sexual Assault in Popular Media with Aaunterria Bollinger-Deters, M.A.
Our second faculty speaker is Aaunterria T. Bollinger-Deters M.A. who is an Instructor in the Department of Race, Gender, and Ethnic Studies, as well as being an Instructor of Record and Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Journalism and Media Communication. She studies Viral Murder Videos, Digital Black Feminisms, Cyberfeminisms, Critical Techocultural Discourse, Virtual World-Building, Erotic Gaming Cultures, Virtual Sex Work, Technosexualities, and the Exploitation film genres (Pornography, Blaxploitation, Grindhouse, and Horror).
Through an interactive discussion, participants will unpack the complex ways in which popular media such as film, television, music, and video games continue to sensationalize toxic, violent, and problematic relationships in ways that gratuitously romanticize and rationalize harm to appear normal.
Through the highlighting of relationship violence and sexual assault as narrative plot devices that gender, racialize, dehumanize, and infantilize in strategic ways, Aaunterria will present approaches based in her research and expertise that prioritize the meaningfulness that these often-uncomfortable conversations can serve toward the healing of our global community.
Additionally, this talk will incorporate conversations on how to recognize and resist these harmful media tropes as they proliferate mainstream media culture at present.
Though there are no simple answers or “quick fixes” to be found in this talk, Aaunterria’s hope that participants will become more vigilantly aware of ways in which active media engagement can aid in the dismantling of cultural structures that facilitate a White supremacist heteropatriarchal system of domination through the stylized coding of relationship violence and sexual assault in popular media around the world.
October 28th, 6:00 – 7:30 p.m., LSC 386, Drop-In, Dinner Provided, For accommodations please email SafeCenter@colostate.edu
Halloween Trivia hosted by the SAFE Center Peer Leaders
Our favorite annual Halloween tradition returns! Join the SAFE Center Peer Leaders for our best trivia event yet!! All ages welcome.
Sign up with friends to form a trivia team and compete to win Prizes. Wear team costumes for a chance at some extra points! All team members need to sign up for this event individually, **Please fill out the form for yourself only.**
SIGN UP CLOSES at 11:59 Wednesday, October 27th! All answers after this time will not be accepted, as we will have already put in our pizza and prize orders.
Contact safecenter@colostate.edu if there are any questions.
