PINK women hold on-campus safety events to educate the community. PHOTO CREDIT: Eddie Melfi | Staff Photographer
On Thursday, Oct. 27, the University of Rhode Island’s P.I.N.K. (Powerful, Independent, Notoriously, Knowledgeable) Women organization held a safety awareness event for women and anyone else who wanted to come and listen.
Aliviyah Perryman, a third-year psychology major and women’s awareness chair in P.I.N.K., alongside other members, said that this event was important for students at URI, regardless of who they are.
“I’ve heard or witnessed multiple women and men put themselves in a risky situation, and it made me feel like I should step up and say something for the community as a whole so we would know our resources and how to conduct ourselves in a safe manner,” Perryman said.
She and the other members at the front of the room took turns going over a slideshow. The presentation provided medical, health and self-defense safety tips and advice for women. The event was split into two kinds of safety tips: those for the day and those for the night.
For daily life, a lot of the advice and information was about where women can go when they aren’t feeling well or if they need medical attention, mental health support, pads and tampons or medicine. They talked about how the Women’s Center, Health Center, Gender and Sexuality Center and Counseling Center are some of the best places for women to go on campus when they need help or support.
For safety tips for nightlife on campus, they focused on students going out to parties. The main recommendations were for students to carry protection (pepper spray, pocket-knife, taser, monkey-balls and noisemakers) at all times, make sure to plan the night ahead with their friends, know who’s going out and keep text notifications on at all times.
One important piece of information shared was that DNA stays on the skin, which can be important to know if someone is sexually assaulted. This is important, as some victims of sexual assault shower or clean themselves after being assaulted or before going to the police or a hospital, and the DNA will not wash off if you take a shower. It takes a couple of days for DNA to come off the skin.
After the presentation ended, Perryman then told everyone that they’d be playing Jeopardy to see if they retained any information from the presentation. She was very happy with the turnout and seeing a lot of women come to this event to learn more about ways to keep themselves safe.
She said that she hopes to reach out to a larger crowd with this information and to collaborate with iStand to do more events pertaining to safety and how students can have fun on campus without putting themselves at risk.
On their slideshow they explained that iStand is a team of specially trained students who create bystander intervention programs to educate and increase awareness on violence, hate crimes, diversity and more, making them a good resource for students to come to them in the case of an emergency.
Lucchina Breneviloe, a fifth-year senior majoring in Chinese and TMD and president of P.I.N.K. Women, said she hopes the women who were at the event took away valuable information from the presentations. She said that she doesn’t want people to feel as though that they are having information just thrown at them, she wants them to really soak up the information from the presentation.
“You should know that the people who hosted it for you, P.I.N.K. Women, even if you’re not a P.I.N.K. Woman, even if you’re just a woman or just anyone at all, you don’t have to be a woman, we’re here for you, we know these resources, and if you do need someone to reach out to and you don’t want to go to these higher-level people, you can come to us,” Breneviloe said.
P.I.N.K. Women host events throughout the semester and are always willing to help women and men who need support. Their P.I.N.K. process, the process to join the organization, is closed and they have no more spots left; but next fall, they will have more. To learn more about and stay up to date with P.I.N.K., check out their Instagram @pinkwomenURI.