SU’s Psi Chi holds annual domestic violence seminar

Over 80 students attended the fifth annual “Hands R 4 Hugging, Not Hitting Seminar” last Thursday, which was hosted by Psi Chi, the National Honor Society in Psychology.
Brittani Ware, a member of Psi Chi, said that the purpose of the seminar was to “educate and give awareness to domestic violence on campus.”
According to ncadv.org, one out of every four women will experience domestic violence at some point in her lifetime.
Event Coordinator Nicole Murphy felt that there was a “great turnout.” Murphy, a junior, said that it was her first year attending the event and her first year coordinating it.
There were three speakers at the event: Natasha Wilson, a doctoral student at the University of New Orleans and the director of education and training for the battered women’s program; Judge Trudy White, who made her third appearance at the seminar this year; and Cicely Evans, a counselor at Southern University.
Wilson, who mostly led the discussion, said her main goal was to get students to realize the nature of domestic violence.
She stressed that the point she wanted students to leave with was that “domestic violence is not about anger; it’s about power and control.”
As part of her presentation, Wilson focused on different forms of domestic violence including using intimidation, emotional abuse, isolation and threats in order to show power and to control your significant other.
When the topic arose about the abilities and place for women in relationships, Demontre White, an accounting major from Shreveport, commented that “there are certain situations men are in control of and certain situations that women are better in control of, i.e. kids.”
Although some audience members agreed with White, the majority of the participating crowd felt that a relationship should be “50/50.”
Many males in the audience felt that it was important to also discuss domestic violence against men.
“I feel it’s often talked about as a one-sided issue,” said Ronald Myers, Jr., a marketing major from Baton Rouge. “You got to go through the full circle.”
Judge White expressed a common issue with domestic violence is that “a man thinks of his woman as ‘his woman.’ This is a serious issue in our community.”
Murphy declared that she was “really happy with the interaction from the audience.”
Towards the end of the seminar, Wilson posed a question to the audience: “What might it be like to treat each other like human beings?”
For more information about domestic violence, visit ncadv.org. Students who believe they are experiencing domestic violence are encouraged to visit the Southern University Counseling Center.