By Rachel Morse, Staff Writer
After concluding a week of inaugural festivities, OCU will take the plunge into another full week of events to celebrate the fight against societal violence.
Enough is Enough Week returns for its second year involving students, staff and faculty in a week of educational workshops, inspiring performances and the chance to grow together as a campus.
While the national campaign is the first week of April, officials decided to move their participation to April 11-15 to facilitate inaugural events, said Liz Donnelly, associate vice president for student affairs.
“Enough is Enough Week is about bringing awareness to campuses throughout the country in the hopes that this awareness might finally bring an end to violence,” she said. “We all need to learn how to watch our words, to think before we speak and to check our assumptions about people.
“It’s all about learning how to avoid casting stones and intolerance toward others.”
The week will include highlights such as “Mental Health First Aid,” a four-part educational series, “Love Not Hate Day,” inspired by the protests of Westboro Baptist Church, and a special guest poet, Andrea Gibson.
Donnelly said the week will focus on educating the campus and include inspirational events, such as Random Acts of Kindness Day on April 14 and Social Awareness Day on April 15, in which black and white ribbons will be available outside of the caf at noon. Donnelly said the NASPA Foundation, the organization responsible for this campaign, explains on their website that these colors are worn to symbolize the union of “mourning and remembrance with peace, innocence, and solidarity,” in honor of the victims of violence.
“What we seek at OCU is a community held to high standards of integrity,” she said.
Donnelly said this week will be the product of “many departments at OCU pulling together to make it happen,” and specific departments involved in the evolution of this week include the University Counseling Services, Crisis Management Committee, the Wesley Center, and SPECTRUM.
“It’s an event organized by no one and everyone at the same time,” she said. “We just want this week to be really effective.”
Michael McClain, acting sophomore and co-president of SPECTRUM, said he hopes the impact on the student body is educational as well as emotional.
“This week is about examining ourselves, and making sure that we are not committing the acts that we are fighting against,” he said.
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