Members of the Lambda Theta Alpha Latin Sorority believe that the issue of gender equality is something that should be addressed to the campus community.
The sorority held a meeting that anyone on campus could attend in which they discussed the prevalence of male dominance and inequality towards women on Salisbury’s campus.
“Not necessarily openly but I think you can see it [inequality] in the way that people behave around women and just kind of like this underlying innate reflex of men to treat women like they are less of a person,” Chapter Vice President and Senior Mikayla Vonner said in regards to the mistreatment of women on campus.
In discussion of how to tackle this issue of mistreatment and inequality, the girls talked of the importance of standing up for one’s self and speaking out on what is right.
“Some women don’t know how to speak for themselves and get involved,” Chapter Treasurer and senior Katherine Canar said. “Having self-worth, and positive self-image is important because women don’t know that they are allowed to stand up for themselves.”
“Something to approach this issue on campus is to have girls actually speak up for themselves and know that they have a voice to speak back to those guys who do say degrading things to them,” Chapter Orientation Advisor and junior Xiomara Escobar said.
The speakers provided examples of strong well-known women in popular culture and the way they have made their voices heard above men through the volume of their issues.
“The statement that the girls presented about speaking with volume really moved me, and I will remember it in my everyday life to speak my mind and stand up for what I believe in,” senior Rebecca Peffer said.
The women talked about various obstacles standing in the way of them speaking up. They highlighted that physically men are intimidating, and this issue of safety towards women being able to speak up needs to be addressed.
“It can be very intimidating if a man is speaking to you aggressively and inappropriately and you may not want to say anything, so we need to have an open conversation to make women feel protected from the physical barriers that are intimidating us to speak up,” Chapter Secretary and Public Relations for LTA Bree Douthitt said.
Only women attended the meeting and attendees all agreed that this was also an issue in regards to bettering the issue of gender equality at Salisbury.
“We had the discussion that the people who came to the meeting already know all this,” Canar said. “We need to come up with a strategy to get men to understand that they can be feminists too.”
By CAROLINE STREETT
Staff writer
Featured photo: Lambda Theta Alpha of Salisbury image.