Brown and White Vol. 129 no. 12

              The Brown and White Vol. 129 No. 12
Friday, October 16, 2015 ‘All the Lehigh News First’
Slut Walk gets its name back
By FANNY CHEN
B&W Staff
After the event’s cancellation in
2014, Lehigh will host its first-ever
Slut Walk at Lamberton Hall on
Monday.
The Slut Walk, hosted annually by
celebrity Amber Rose in Los Angeles
in the beginning of October, is a
march to raise awareness about
slut shaming, victim blam-ing
and rape culture – three
things that are prevalent on
college campuses and often
lead to incidents of gender
violence.
Lehigh will hold its own
version of the event in an
effort to raise awareness
and work to eliminate the
presence of these three
issues.
The walk was origi-nally
supposed to begin
at Lehigh last year with
the help of the Lehigh
University Feminist
Alliance, but it was
canceled due to the con-troversy
surrounding
its name and concerns
about exclusivity.
The walk was can-celed
last year because
many faculty members
were concerned that
Lehigh was not ready to
address the issues that Slut
Walk presented. As a result,
it was replaced by the March of
Voices, which focused
on ending all types
of discrimina-tion
on campus,
instead of spe-cifically
target-ing
the gender
violence-related
issues that Slut
Walk addresses.
Participants
of this year’s Slut
walk will
meet in
Lamberton Hall at 4 p.m. and watch
a video about the organizers of the
original Slut Walk. Then, they
will make posters that express
why they are participating
in the march. As they walk
around campus, students will
hold up their signs to show
support for victims and call for
an end to rape culture. The
walk will stop at the University
Center front lawn, where partic-ipants
can speak out and share
their own experiences of victim
blaming and slut shaming.
This year, the walk is made
possible with the fund-ing
and support
from the Office of
Gender Violence
Education and
Support. Brooke
DeSipio, the
director of the
office, hopes
that this
e v e n t
w i l l
r a i s e
See SLUT WALK Page 3
LeaderShape 2016 conflicts with sorority rush
By KATIE MORRIS
B&W Staff
Since its installation at Lehigh
two years ago, LeaderShape has
been held after the end of the spring
semester in May. The six-day lead-ership
development retreat has
been moved to the last week of win-ter
break, conflicting with formal
sorority recruitment.
The retreat will be held the last
week of winter break from Jan.
19-24. The date change is because
of a shift in the university’s calen-dar.
Lehigh has had entire week
between the end of exams and com-mencement
in past years, but this
week was moved to the end of win-ter
break. The university did this to
provide students with more time to
participate in a variety of activities.
LeaderShape is a national pro-gram
that was started on Lehigh’s
campus two years ago. It is an
immersive program that provides
students with an opportunity to
develop their identity and lead-ership
skills while increasing the
number of people in the community
who lead with integrity.
The goal of the program is to pro-vide
participants with a “healthy
disregard for the impossible,”
according to the LeaderShape web-site.
When LeaderShape was held at
the end of the spring semester, stu-dents
participating in commence-ment,
summer internships or sum-mer
classes could not go on the
six-day retreat with LeaderShape.
This also contributed to the retreat
date change.
LeaderShape’s new dates now
directly coincide with sorority
recruitment, which is a mandatory
process for any first- or second-year
female student who wants to join
Greek life. It is also mandatory for
women in Greek life. Because of
this, female members of a Greek
organization will be limited in their
participation of LeaderShape.
Before the LeaderShape dates
were changed, the Office of
Fraternity and Sorority Affairs was
See LEADERSHAPE Page 2
“The students are
sent back to campus
with a desire to
change the world.
Christina Jordan
Assist. Dir. of Leadership
Development ”
awareness about gender violence sur-vivors
who are victim-blamed and
slut-shamed for their sexual assaults.
In September, the office invited
Emily Lindin, the founder of the
Unslut Project, to Lehigh. In her pre-sentation,
Lindin discussed ending
sexual bullying and slut shaming
in not only schools but also commu-nities,
media and culture. The Slut
Walk follows up on the issues Lindin
discussed, and makes them closer
and more personal to Lehigh.
DeSipio said she hopes the Slut
Walk will help create a space where
victims of such assaults are comfort-able
sharing their experiences.
“Slut Walk is just one awareness
event that is part of a larger con-versation
about gender violence on
college campuses,” DeSipio said in an
email. “It is a part of Gender Violence
Education and Support’s ongoing
conversation of these issues. We will
continue to work on this until all
survivors at Lehigh feel believed and
supported, and are no longer blamed
for their assaults.”
However, controversy over the use
of the word “slut” in the event’s name
still exists. Rita Jones, the director
of the Women’s Center, said the pur-pose
of the controversial name is to
redefine the term.
“The use of the word ‘slut’ has a
long history, but I think Slut Walk
is trying to reclaim ownership of the
word so that it cannot be used nega-tively,”
Jones said.
Despite the continued debate
over its name, Slut Walk has
received the support of Jones
and student members of
the Women’s Center.
Jones said she thinks the
walk will open opportu-nities
for the community
Courtesy of Christa Neu
From left: Fatih Aktas, Danielle
Klein and Chijioke Umezinwa
participate in group bonding at
LeaderShape. The six-day event
typically takes place at the end
of the spring semester.
In 2014 Lehigh canceled its
Slut Walk due to concerns
over the implications of the
event’s name, instead
hosting a March of Voices