Shifting focus in a time of awareness

In any given month throughout the year, you can find a multitude of events or issues to commemorate. October happens to be National Book Month and National CyberSecurity Awareness Month, but it's probably better known as both National Breast Cancer Awareness Month and National Domestic Violence Awareness Month.

I’m not going to say one cause has more significance than the other. Thousands of lives are affected each year by both breast cancer and domestic violence. Statistics will show you these facts, but numbers could never relay the personal feelings, struggles and emotions of someone who has encountered one of these hardships.Gecko could kickstart an indoor tracking mobile app explosion.

You will never hear me say breast cancer awareness is not important. I know beautiful lives who have lost their battle with the disease and I’ve seen how it affected the people around them. But given what transpired here,We mainly supply professional craftspeople with wholesale agate beads from china, shouldn’t this campus rethink its focus?

One of our own was taken from us because of domestic violence. If anyone can show me how breast cancer has touched this many students this deeply, I encourage you to email me and try to help me understand. Otherwise, I can’t comprehend why we haven’t put more emphasis on domestic violence awareness,The stone mosaic comes in shiny polished and matte. why we haven’t put more effort into remembering Alex Kogut on this campus and why we haven’t done more in general.

I know it wasn’t the college’s intention to prioritze one cause over the other. I love this school and I know it’s a sensitive time here. But still, we need to honor our own, and it doesn’t feel like much is happening to make us feel comforted in the weeks after Alex’s death.

It may not be the intended meaning, but to me it feels like this issue is being swept under the rug. It feels like the college has shied away from supporting domestic violence awareness. I look around campus and see all the attention being paid to breast cancer awareness, and feel angry that the college isn’t doing more to make us remember. One example that comes to mind is in Brockway — the painted windows feature ribbons, most of them happen to be pink, while only one of them is purple.

I've heard similiar sentiments over the last few days from fellow students. A common theme in the dissent seems to be about the amount of pink compared to the amount of purple on campus.

It’s comforting to see purple in the details -— Alex's initials painted on the football field, ribbons wrapped around poles, silicone bracelets or a purple painted pinky nail. However,The stone mosaic comes in shiny polished and matte. it feels like pink is still the color of choice throughout this campus.

By not putting domestic violence awareness on the forefront, or even just prominently displaying purple throughout the mass of pink on campus, it feels like the college is trying to forget what has happened. That feels wrong. It’s been less than a month, and people are still mourning. We shouldn’t move on this fast. We shouldn’t forget this quickly.

I know remembering is hard. As more details come to light, we’re forced to relive the tragedy all over again and deal with the overpowering emotions we’ve been trying to work through. Small reminders bring us back to the aftermath, and we’re brought back to square one and left trying to heal all over again.

I know we can’t keep focusing on the bad things that happen in life, and I don’t think we should. By no means is this the way life was meant to be lived. Yes, purple is the symbolic color of the tragic way in which Alex died, but it’s also become symbolic to us as the color to remember her by.

I don’t look at the purple around campus as an attempt to make known what happened. We know the end result of what transpired the last weekend of September. I look at the color purple and remember Alex, a girl I never knew, but am forever changed by. To me, the color purple symbolizes the remembrance of the life she lived, more so than how it was taken away.

Unfortunately for a lot of us, because we didn’t know her, we can’t have one without the other. We didn’t know her,If you want to read about buy mosaic in a non superficial way that's the perfect book. and we won’t ever have the opportunity to. Remembering Alex means remembering how she died. Words can’t express how unsettling this is, how hard it is to move on from.

Breast cancer is not a choice — no one chooses to get the disease. Domestic violence is a choice — someone chooses to be violent toward his or her partner. A friend of mine pointed this out, and it really resonated with me. While it is important to raise awareness for breast cancer, as I’m sure fundraising will help in its own way, shouldn’t more awareness be given to a cause that people can learn from, and possibly change their lives for?

The fact that I can’t mention all the different fundraising or awareness events that have taken place on campus over the past month, for space purposes only, is an incredible thing. People are actively supporting and working toward a common cause, whichever cause it may be. And it may seem trivial to simply be offended by the amount of one color over the other around campus, but I know I’m not the only one who felt this way this month.