In a recent Instagram post, the Women’s Center offered a diagram that showcased the markers of a healthy friendship, including trust, honesty, open communication, and boundaries.
In another recent Instagram post, the Women’s Center shared talks about Survivor’s Circle. It’s a sexual assault support group that offers support, healing activities, connecting with others, and learning coping skills.
According to the Women’s Center website, they come up with fun and collaborative ideas for the spring semester. That safe space for students will bring them together for a good time. Their goal here is to create a safe space for students and educate them on healthy relationships.
“Traditionally, the Women’s Center’s big spring event is Take Back The Night. That is in conjunction with sexual assault awareness, we will have a lot more fun events but that is a big one for the spring,” graduate student Sophie Williams said.
This event involves students gathering on the quad and hearing from survivors of sexual assault in the Loyola community. This event has happened annually for the last couple of years and usually receives a large turnout.
In addition to Take Back the Night, Williams added that the Women’s Center will have a lot of fun holiday events. For example, they usually host an Easter egg hunt.
These events allow students to come to the Women’s Center and become familiar with their services, staff, and values.
“I think especially for the fun events, we just want to get people together and we want to get people familiar with the offices, and familiar with Seton Court, just kind of knowing where we are and our general real estate. There’s us, there’s the health center, there’s residence life. A lot of resources for students to become familiar with,” Williams said.
This helps students get familiar with other resources that are available in Seton Court. These events have gotten a lot of recognition in the past, and Williams noted that people seem to enjoy them.
Last year, Williams said over 200 people showed up for the Easter egg hunt. Big turnouts for these events give the Women’s Center more connections and bigger turnouts in the future.
“We will have weekly events, and a Sexual Assault Awareness Week in April. Last year, we did an Easter Egg Hunt so we are going to do that again probably before Easter,” Melissa Lees said, Director of the Women’s Center.
The weekly events the Women’s Center raises the Loyola community awareness of them. They do fun events to bring people in and connect with one another. They offer these events so students can find their people on campus, if they haven’t already.
“My hope is that students can connect with one another and can have fun. A lot of times we’ve heard that students that come to Women’s Center events who maybe don’t have their clique yet on campus, and this is where they find their friends,” Lees said.
She hopes that students will be able to find their people on campus through the Women’s Center by holding these events.
If you want to learn more about the Women’s Center, follow their Instagram. Make sure to look out for flyers around campus about their new and upcoming events.
