Syracuse University’s Panhellenic Council will host the university’s first ever Red Zone Awareness Week starting Monday.

During the week, members of Greek life will be tabling in the Schine Student Center Atrium and collecting toiletry donations for Vera House, a domestic and sexual violence shelter in Syracuse. The week will also feature an “Enough is Enough” training for Greek councils and a talk about pornography in relation to domestic and sexual violence.

The Red Zone lasts about six weeks, from the beginning of the fall semester until Thanksgiving break, during which college students are more likely to be assaulted, said Nicole Sherwood, a senior public relations major and president of SU’s Panhellenic Council.

More than 50 percent of sexual assaults occur during this time, according to statistics released by RAINN.

The Panhellenic Council at SU does the majority of their sexual assault awareness campaigns during the spring. However, upon learning about the Red Zone, officials in the council decided to hold a week of awareness in the fall, since that is when sexual assault is most prevalent, Sherwood said.

Sherwood added that she has been working closely with the Office of Health Promotion and Samantha Skaller, a senior viola performance and music history and cultures dual major and member of the national It’s On Us Advisory Committee, for advice and guidance.

The biggest event of the week will be the Quad display, Sherwood said. One hundred different shirts — 80 of them white and the remaining 20 red — will represent that one in five women get sexually assaulted before they graduate. The display will be accompanied by signs with statistics throughout the Quad. They chose to do shirts because shirts are gender neutral and they thought it wouldn’t be triggering to survivors, Sherwood said.

“We want to get people to stop and look and actually see that it’s a materialized number,” Sherwood said.

A major part of Red Zone Awareness Week will be done in collaboration with local bars which include Faegan’s Cafe & Pub, Chuck’s Cafe, Lucy’s Retired Surfers Bar, Harry’s Bar and DJ’s On the Hill, said Daria Grineva-Oganesyan, program director for the event and a senior international relations major.

Starting on Tuesday, the bars will rotate the days they participate. Each bar will replace their stamps, which are used to prove a patron has paid the coverage charge to get in, with one of the five stamps created for the campaign, Oganesyan said.

Among the stamps are phrases of empowerment: “Yes means yes,” “Our community our responsibility,” “#Theredzone” and “Enough is enough,” Sherwood said.

“It’s a way to spread awareness in a different kind of way,” Oganesyan said. “I know personally I would be super curious to see a different stamp than the regular Chuck’s stamp or Faegan’s. It’s just another reminder of how we should be careful.”

Sherwood said she hopes the week of awareness starts earlier in the semester next year and that it’s not just a Panhellenic event, but something that expands to other organizations on campus. She added that she hopes it becomes a more event-based program as opposed to awareness-based.

“We just want to see people come out aware on the issue,” Sherwood said.

Published on October 3, 2016 at 12:12 am

Contact Stacy: sfern100@syr.edu | @StacyFernandezB