Junior Lee Allen attended the University Panhellenic Council (UPC)’s Take Back the Night event last week at Pace—which had the goal of exposing sexual violence—with low expectations, but ultimately was greatly impacted by it.

“I wasn’t necessarily looking forward to the event because I thought it would be a really cliché event, with the message being ‘guys, don’t rape people’ and ‘girls, stand up for yourselves’,” Allen said. “But I thought the event really did well to expose how anytime you have an incident of sexual violence you’re going to impact an entire community of people.”

During one part of the event every participant had to write on a card an incident of sexual violence that they knew of. Allen saw Pace’s community being emotionally impacted by the fact that nearly everyone attending could share a story that happened to them, or someone they knew.

“By the second or third story you are like, ‘oh my goodness, how could this possibly happen?’ and for [the stories] to be [openly] discussed was just amazing,” Allen said. “The fact that everyone knew a story about sexual violence is very discouraging, but we have to encourage ourselves to be proactive in addressing this issue.”

Allen found that for around 10 minor sexual offenses like being touched on the butt, there was a major one like rape.

While Allen does not go looking for stories of sexual violence at Pace, he often hears rumors about it occurring in different relationships or organizations, but is never sure if they are fact or just individuals trying to defame each other.

As a member of the fraternity Alpha Chi Rho (AXP), Allen hopes that this event will strengthen the Greek community at Pace.

“As a Greek community, if something happens to anyone in terms of sexual violence, whether it be in a sorority or a fraternity, it just hits our whole community, because these are all people we care about, and have come to love and interact with. So I think it really did well to show what our community is about,” Allen said

Allen wants to incorporate AXP in the effort to end sexual violence.

“One of my national fraternity’s sayings is that ‘It’s on us’ as [men] to do our part to ensure that no sexual violence happens and [to] understand the repercussions for any actions, no matter how small or large they are,” Allen said.

The AXP member also feels as though it’s the job of both sexes to take steps to reduce the violence.

“To gain a more egalitarian society in terms of safety it’s up to both men and women to have higher standards to ensure our actions do not reflect sexual violence,” Allen said. “I think this event captured the essence of what the issue is. It’s not so much a gender clash, but being able to [get people to] proactively speak out when it happens and ensure it never happens in the first place.”