CORTLAND, N.Y. — The Cortland YWCA’s Aid to Victims of Violence, located at 14 Clayton Avenue, is teaming up with SUNY Cortland and Tompkins Cortland Community College to help plan and sponsor events to help promote sexual violence prevention during the month of April, Sexual Violence Awareness Month.
Both campuses will be holding Take Back the Night Marches and will be participating in the Around the World for Yeardley campaign as part of a partnership with the One Love foundation.
Dating back to the 1970’s, Take Back The Night has aimed to bring awareness to the prevalence of sexual assault, domestic violence, dating violence, sexual abuse and other forms of sexual violence with the ultimate goal of ending these life altering crimes. The Cortland community is encouraged to come join the marches to help show support for survivors and also express their own desire to see these actions cease.
SUNY Cortland will be marching from the Corey Union steps starting at 8 p.m. on Wednesday April 11th, rain or shine. Tompkins Cortland Community College will be marching in the Student Center starting at 5 p.m. on April 25th.
Students gather outside Corey Union for a Take Back the Night march on October 5, 2017 (Cortland Voice file photo)
The One Love Foundation was created in memory of Yeardley Love, a lacrosse player at the University of Virginia who was beaten to death by her ex-boyfriend just weeks before graduation. To raise awareness for domestic violence and intimate partner violence amongst college students, Around the World for Yeardley is an event that brings the college and local communities together to walk as many yards as possible.
This year’s event aims to accumulate the same amount of yards, 50 million, as it would take to walk around the world. SUNY campuses across the state will compete to see who can get the most yards all while working together to achieve the 50 million yard goal.
Tompkins Cortland Community College will be hosting the indoor event on April 11th from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. SUNY Cortland will be hosting the event on April 15th from Noon to 5 p.m. at the Stadium Complex with a rain location of Lusk Field house. Both events will include prizes, raffles, and limited food. Registration for both events will happen the day of the events.
The Cortland community is encouraged to attend any and all of the events listed above. For further information on any of these or different events in the future feel free to visit the Tompkins Cortland Community College website, www.tc3.edu, or the SUNY Cortland website, www.cortland.edu. For more information on the Cortland YWCA please visit www.cortlandywca.org.
