Brainstorming for GLBT event
One thing I've decided to do for the Rainbow Alliance and cleared with Craig, the advisor, is a day sometime in November that will be dedicated to raising awareness of violence against GLBT people. We're thinking of showing the movie The Laramie Project (about the Matthew Shepard case) and putting on some type of demonstration that has a representation of the number of hate crimes.
The problem is that I'm not sure how to do that last part. First, I need to find concrete numbers, which is a bit difficult, and figure out a good way to visually represent it. For instance, some demonstrations about the Iraq war have used boots to represent the number of soldiers who have died. Something tells me that using candles (the first possibility that came to mind) wouldn't go over well with the Suffolk staff.
I did find a website through PBS that I can use as a resource here. According to data from 2006 there were 1,472 reported hate crimes against people because of their sexual orientation in that year nationally (keep in mind that more crimes occurred than were reported just due to the nature of the UCR). They don't have anything about gender identity, but I'm sure that's out there somewhere. I've also seen a statistic that almost 1/3 of gay students in high school are attacked or threatened with violence.
I think this is important to do because, especially in Massachusetts, some people think that there's no anti-gay violence just because we allow marriage. Wrong. There were 69 reported hate crimes based on sexual orientation in 2003, 13 of which took place at colleges an universities, most of which were physical assault. Oddly enough, the data says that 9 took place at Northeastern University, the most of any place, so I'm somewhat glad I decided not to go there in light of that.
At the next Rainbow meeting I'll bring this up and see if other people have ideas. Craig and I think we could really go somewhere with this.
The problem is that I'm not sure how to do that last part. First, I need to find concrete numbers, which is a bit difficult, and figure out a good way to visually represent it. For instance, some demonstrations about the Iraq war have used boots to represent the number of soldiers who have died. Something tells me that using candles (the first possibility that came to mind) wouldn't go over well with the Suffolk staff.
I did find a website through PBS that I can use as a resource here. According to data from 2006 there were 1,472 reported hate crimes against people because of their sexual orientation in that year nationally (keep in mind that more crimes occurred than were reported just due to the nature of the UCR). They don't have anything about gender identity, but I'm sure that's out there somewhere. I've also seen a statistic that almost 1/3 of gay students in high school are attacked or threatened with violence.
I think this is important to do because, especially in Massachusetts, some people think that there's no anti-gay violence just because we allow marriage. Wrong. There were 69 reported hate crimes based on sexual orientation in 2003, 13 of which took place at colleges an universities, most of which were physical assault. Oddly enough, the data says that 9 took place at Northeastern University, the most of any place, so I'm somewhat glad I decided not to go there in light of that.
At the next Rainbow meeting I'll bring this up and see if other people have ideas. Craig and I think we could really go somewhere with this.