On a More Serious Note (WAY More Serious)

Bear with me, this is serious but also very important. Listen up! Or rather read up... Even though that's not a phrase.

About a week ago, I was reading some newspaper or magazine (I think it was either the New York Times Magazine or The Economist), and I read an article about a 23-year-old rape/murder victim in India. It's sparked a massive debate throughout the world about the lack of action in the southern Asian countries when it comes to public humiliation and rape.

Tonight, there was a vigil held on the Cornell campus to honor this woman and to discuss what can be done to prevent these awful occurrences from happening. I initially went because my friend's mother asked if I could bring a bass drum down and keep a beat as a group of about maybe thirty or forty people sang both "We Shall Overcome" and a traditional Indian song. I don't know what it's called, but the whole beginning was so solemn. It definitely made me think twice about grinning and waving as I saw a few of my friends there as I most often do.

For the next hour and a half, around ten people went up to a podium and spoke about the issues surrounding rape. My friend's mother was the first to speak, and introduced the problems that the world is facing (yes RIGHT NOW), and called for justice for those dead or injured because of abuse. Justice, not revenge.

After her, a South Asian History professor from Cornell spoke, and what she said really hit home for me. Her basic point was that all of us walk around every day thinking none of these bad things will happen to us because we would never be out that late, or we would never dress like that, etc. So here's the problem: this woman who was brutally murdered was attacked on a public bus in a major city while with her boyfriend. Does this scenario sound familiar to any of you? Scary, no? I immediately thought back to a few days ago when my dad told me something that happened years ago. I had gone to a friend's house for a sleepover on the badish side of town. He figured it'll be ok, the neighborhood doesn't look too bad. So here I am, years older, and I just found out that the very same night there was a murder in someone's house three blocks down. This is scary business, people... I also thought of a story from Calvin and Hobbes when the family comes back from a wedding to find that their house had been robbed.

Yes, I was a Calvin and Hobbes fan.

When I first walked into the room where the vigil was taking place, I was surprised to see a mix of races there (I had looked at the invite list on Facebook... All Indian people), but also glad. One student, a Canadian with roots in China, actually read an episode from The Vagina Monologues, talking about the brutality and wrongness of rape with a few added statistics on the side. One billion women in the world have been sexually abused. That's one in three women. That's a LOT of people, and that doesn't even include the men and children.

Know your facts. Raise awareness. Aaand that's about as much seriousness as I can take.