Print

Paz-Amor, Windy

College of Education and Social Services

M. Ed.

Sexual and gender based violence on college campuses is a microcosm of the macro global health crisis. Looking at the "how" when addressing these issues will serve to be instrumental to the individual future academic, social, and spiritual success of the victim/survivor and the alleged perpetrator. I will interweave poetry and prose as my way of capturing the complexities of identity as it relates to sexual and gender based violence.
My thesis will explore how a community is impacted and shaped by violence and how pluralism can offer a sense of place during a time of crisis across markers of difference for that survivor of violence. Addressing sexual and gender based violence through the lens of pluralism challenges each of us to exercise our individual human agency. I maintain that by identifying individual contribution, all the while addressing sexual and gender based violence from an individual perspective rather than a cookie-cutter model we begin to address the issue outside the hegemony or dominant ways that define the parameters, origins, and solutions to the issue.
Honoring the intersections of identity, while addressing sexual and gender based violence on college campuses, will be critical in shifting the climate of inclusiveness from tolerance and diversity to pluralism. This practice will make it possible for more people, from all walks of life, to feel safer regardless of ability, race, gender, orientation, religion and socio-economic status. Utilizing this approach will create more opportunity for survivors of violence to come forward, report, seek services, and continue to flourish as individuals, students and community members. By interweaving race, sex, orientation, ability, religious affiliation, and socio-economic status as a holistic approach when addressing the issue we honor the individual walking through the process.