TKE is hosting a round table on sexual assault prevention this evening
It’s a step in the right direction for talking about sexual assault on campus
TKE is officially back on campus, and they’re hosting a round table about sexual assault prevention as one of their first official events as a fraternity. We spoke to James Novello, the Historian of TKE, about what exactly they hope to accomplish this semester with their new initative.
The fraternity has chosen sexual assault prevention as their focus for the coming semester. When asked about why they chose to make their focus sexual assault, TKE Historian James Novello told The Tab “Coming back on campus, we had a lot of time to think to ourselves about what would make positive impact at FSU. It was hard to pick a social issue that we wanted to focus on.
We’d sit in e-board meetings asking ourselves what we should do. We wanted to highlight an issue that could affect anyone, and we feel sexual assault is something that’s been dropped off of FSU’s radar. Seeing there haven’t been huge strides made from person to person for FSU students, we decided we wanted to go through and highlight things that haven’t gotten a lot of attention. The university is focusing on it on an establishment level, but it didn’t feel like the FSU community was behind them, supporting them.”
When asked why, as a fraternity, sexual assault was so important to them, TKE told The Tab, “Some view fraternity life as an issue that goes against progressive thought and social change, but this is something everyone can sit down and say ‘we need to combat violence against women, or any sort of sexual violence’. These acts of violence are something that transcend day to day political meandering- it’s something that can affect anyone, and everyone can agree it’s important to get behind.
Sexual assault is something that has a long standing implication and affects entire communities. If your roommate has experienced sexual violence, it affects them and you, your families, and your friend groups. It’s not something that’s exclusive from men to women – it can affect men to men, women to women, family members to family members. There are a lot of pathways, and doesn’t just touch a specific social group, it affects all of us.”
TKE’s goal for the round table event and initiative as a whole, is to spearhead positive change on campus. TKE told The Tab, “While it looks good as a fraternity, the social change is something that affects members socially, and FSU as a whole. One of the main goals is to showcase a destructive dichotomy that can be misconstrued in college life. We want to show that Greek life, both sororities and fraternities, can be seen as positive, and that we can be instigators of positive change.
We are also hoping, for the greater FSU community, to make sure it doesn’t end at just talking about issues, but the that it encourages community interaction. We want to facilitate a conversation. We’re inviting clubs and organization on campus to help us showcase these avenues of social change.”
The event will be held tonight, January 10th from 6:30 to 9:30 pm at Club Downunder. You can find additional information about the event here.