Megan Zerrer
Sports Editor
Last Thursday, Dec. 1, a group of students organized a One Love Escalation Workshop in order to spread awareness on The College of Wooster campus about dating violence. Tiffany Trunk ’17 was responsible for organizing the event after another student suggested that k(no)w should host the workshop, which was hosted by the Athletics Dept. in previous years. Trunk and her co-facilitators, Aidan Prien ’17, Emma Griffith ’19, Miranda James ’20, Ari Venick ’17 and Myra Praml ’19 screened a film composed by One Love, The Escalation Film, which portrays an example of college dating violence. After the screening, students were invited to participate in a discussion about the film and dating violence in real life.
The One Love organization was created by Sharon Love after her daughter, Yeardley Love, was beaten to death by her boyfriend her senior year of college. The organization aims to bring awareness to the issues of relationship violence through education and empowerment. One Love operates under the belief that relationship violence is an epidemic that can be stopped when young adults are educated about the issue and empowered to effect change within their communities (onelove.org). The site presents the scary statistic that one in three women and one in four men will experience relationship violence throughout their lifetime.
“I really was a fan of the idea from the start, especially being personally connected to the issue of dating violence,” Trunk responded when asked about her involvement in the event. “After meeting with Joe Kirk [associate director of security and protective services/director of Greek life], I decided to bring the Greek groups specifically into it by offering [service] hours and targeting advertisements toward Greek groups and first-years. Granted, this is a very widespread issue and was open to the whole campus,” Trunk said.
Aside from participating in on-campus workshops, there are a variety of ways for those interested to become involved in the organization. The One Love website offers interested students the option of hosting their own on-campus workshops. The goal of the workshops is to illuminate the warning signs of a violent relationship with the hopes that participants will engage in conversations about how communities can work to prevent dating violence.
Interested parties can also join Team One Love, which is currently composed of 9,092 members. The purpose of the team is to bring people together, creating a platform upon which to take a public stand against unhealthy relationships in the community.
#YardsforYeardley is an athletic-based component of the movement that hosts walks, runs and bike rides with the goal of raising awareness for One Love and the movement to end relationship abuse. Participants have logged a total of 132,729,955 yards. Teams can sign up on the One Love website and can fundraise for the program as well.
“It is so important to spread awareness about domestic violence,” Trunk said. “It happens much more often than people expect. If people are interested, I still have an abundance of resources, including campus-local-national, what to do if your friend is getting abused/the abuser, knowing your relationship rights, a reporting flowchart and general information about policies, etc. If students are interested, I encourage them to email Jess Ettell, Angela Johnson or myself or come to a k(no)w meeting.”