USU students give Valentine’s Day new meaning
For some Utah State University students, Valentine’s Day can be less a celebration of love and more a reflection on indifference.
“It’s highly altered and not historically accurate,” said Jacob Rainsdon, an undeclared freshman. “I feel like it’s a made-up holiday now, kind of just for fun.”
Sage Rowley, a freshman majoring in communicative disorders, expressed a similar sentiment toward the holiday.
“It’s a nice reminder, but I don’t think we should have to have a day set aside to tell someone you love them,” Rowley said. “I think that should be an everyday type of thing.”
Sara Whipple, a freshman majoring in English, said she chooses not to celebrate the holiday.
“To be totally honest, I don’t really celebrate Valentine’s Day,” Whipple said. “I celebrate the day after, when all the chocolate goes on sale.”
Whipple is one of a group of students at USU who choose to forego flowers, candy and giant teddy bears every year for something less tangible, but perhaps more meaningful. As performers in USU’s annual production of “The Vagina Monologues,” these students work to raise awareness of sexual and domestic abuse and to put an end to these types of violence.
“The Vagina Monologues” take center stage in promoting the cause of V-Day, an international organization dedicated to ending violence against women and girls. V-Day designates February as a month devoted to advocating against sexual and domestic assault — and to performing the monologues. This year’s performance began on Wednesday and will continue through Friday. Tickets can be purchased in the Access and Diversity Center for $10 each.
“I, as a young child, suffered from abuse, and I don’t stand for that nonsense any more,” Whipple said. “I like to volunteer my time and my effort to a cause that will help remove people from that toxic environment.”
Specifically, the funds from Utah State’s production of “The Vagina Monologues” go to supporting Citizens Against Physical and Sexual Abuse, or CAPSA, an organization founded in Cache Valley in 1976. CAPSA, which identifies itself as the first mobile crisis team in Utah, dedicates itself to responding to incidents of sexual and domestic abuse and coaching victims through the healing process.
Thad and Jenny Box, two longtime residents of Logan who helped CAPSA get its start, recalled how the organization was first conceived in the College of Natural Resources at USU, where Thad Box was dean at the time. Marsha Rawlins, a secretary at the college, helped assemble what was then termed a “rape crisis team” to help students who had been sexually assaulted.
“What these young women were concerned about was rape and the fact that a woman could be raped and there’s no support,” Jenny Box said. “There’s just cops doing their thing, lawyers doing their thing, the doctor doing his thing, and here is this woman with nothing.”
With help and support from other Cache Valley residents, Box worked to secure the first grant funding that helped Rawlins’s rape crisis team evolve into CAPSA. Today, the organization is able to support victims of sexual and domestic assault through the healing process by providing an array of services including counseling, transitional housing, casework and employment services.
Jill Anderson, the organization’s executive director, said they are currently working on the development of a lethality assessment program in conjunction with local law enforcement. The system helps to assess the risk of homicide in incidents of domestic violence and helps both law enforcement officers and victims understand these risks on a case-by-case basis.
A similar lethality assessment experiment in Maryland resulted in a 40 percent reduction in that state’s homicide rate. Anderson explained that in Utah, 47 percent of homicides are domestic violence-related.
“If we can reduce that by 40 percent, we are reducing the homicide rate in Utah tremendously,” she said. “It’s exciting that we can identify those that are at high risk and get them the help that they need.”
In addition to expanding this and other services provided by the organization, Anderson said funding from this year’s production of “The Vagina Monologues” will go to developing a therapy program for children of domestic violence victims, who are 2.6 percent more likely to enter into abusive relationships themselves. Through child therapy, the organization hopes to decrease this risk.
Along with taking a stand against abuse in all its forms, the organization’s biggest contribution in advocating against sexual and domestic violence, Thad Box said, may be its ability to raise awareness.
“They created an awareness that there’s a problem here that needs to be solved and CAPSA has become a leader not only here in the Valley, but in the state, as to what can be done,” Box said.
Through the efforts of CAPSA and the cast of “The Vagina Monologues,” Valentine’s Day can take on new meaning for USU students.
“Actually, my Valentine’s Day is centered around ‘The Vagina Monologues,’” said Jasmine Despain, the president of USU’s chapter of the international empowerment organization I Am That Girl. “It’s just so empowering and I feel so good being a part of something so strong.”
— ac.roberts95@gmail.com