ZTA's Isabel Standbridge shares her perspective on AFLV in this week's guest blog.
Being surrounded by 3,600 people that have similar interests to you is bound to be powerful, especially when all 3,600 people are students in the Greek community who are passionate about making a change. Through this conference, I had the opportunity to meet and spend time with other Lehigh students, connect with sisters from other schools, and talk to other people who want to help make a positive impact on the Greek community.
One of the sessions I attended was about conversations around consent led by Tim Mousseau. I knew that he would be coming to speak at Lehigh so I was excited to see what he had to say. I also thought that it seemed like an interesting take on sexual assault conversations. It was about how to prevent it from happening, and changing the way we talk about sex. He talked about how in order to work towards stopping sexual assault, we have to have conversations about our sexual values. By sexual values he means when people feel comfortable hooking up. Different people are comfortable with different things and in order to protect those we’re with we have to know what they’re okay with. Another aspect of this is framing the way we talk about sex and not making it seem like something that everybody has to do. You don’t have to have sex all the time to be masculine and as a woman you’re not a slut for having too much sex or a prude for not doing it. Everybody has a different normal.
I plan to bring these conversations back to my chapter and the greater Lehigh community. I hope to bring more events with BTS to my chapter to spark these talks and make everybody more comfortable with who they are and what they believe in. AFLV made me feel empowered and like we as Greek students can really make a difference in the community.