While Valentine’s day is often focused on romantic relationships, the University of Rhode Island Women’s Center wants to focus on female friendships, according to graduate assistant Brianna Rios.
Located near Barlow Circle, 7 Quarry Road is where students can find the Women’s Center. It is open to all members of the URI community.
The Women’s Center hosts events that promote empowering women, its most recent event being “Spill The Tea: Galentine’s Day.” The event on Feb. 12 centered around showing appreciation toward friends through decorating free heart-shaped cookies and writing “galentine’s” letters.
Rios thought of the idea for a Galentine’s celebration and shared it with the Director of the Women’s Center, Ana Barraza.
“I wanted to do Galentine’s because I feel like there’s not enough emphasis on female friendships, connections between women and spaces to kinda just hang and yap,” Rios said.
Galentine’s is nationally recognized as its own holiday, its official celebration day being the day before Valentine’s Day, Feb. 13. Rios thinks friendships can be underappreciated, and the Women’s Center aims to inspire people to celebrate and nurture female friendships.
“It’s a good way to connect with other women on campus and spread awareness about the Women’s Center, because a lot of people don’t know where it is, but it’s such a nice safe space to connect with other people,” fourth-year Grace Pereira said.
The Women’s Center is a space on the URI campus to advocate and learn about gender equity, according to Graduate Hall Director Kimoya Bowman.
“It’s a great opportunity to connect with other women on campus, talk about stories that we can share with each other, laugh, and have a smile,” Bowman said.
The Women’s Center hosts a ‘Spill The Tea’ event every Wednesday, typically from 3 p.m to 5 p.m. The Center also holds other events that promote social justice and gender equality issues that affect woman-identifying people.
According to URI Involved, the Women’s Center’s next event is “The Vagina Dialogues,” which will take place on Sunday at 7 p.m. and March 1 at 5 p.m. The performance will contain monologues from multiple women, centering around raising awareness for the issue of violence against women. Both events will be in Edwards Auditorium.
Visit the Women’s Center’s Instagram page @uriwomenscenter for information about future events.
