Talking about sexism is fine, but it also should bring about some change for the better, according to Chloe Fishman.
The sophomore at Appalachian State University wants frank conversations to spur people to acknowledge and address discrimination, which is why she and a classmate are helming a project to collect first-person stories from students on the Boone, N.C., campus who have encountered sexism.
“The goal of our project is to raise awareness of prejudice against college-aged women students because we feel like, especially in colleges, it’s a pretty liberal space often and people tend to just assume that things are happy-go-lucky,” said Fishman, 20, a Chapel Hill, N.C., native majoring in sustainable development.
Fishman and her classmate, Meagan Williams, are among Appalachian State students participating in the campus-wide Global Peacebuilding Project, a contest in which students propose and complete social justice initiatives meant to challenge discrimination in various forms.
The program is modeled after a 2015 worldwide United Nations project, the Diversity Contest, said Martin Schoenhals, an Appalachian State adjunct professor who is a key organizer of the college initiative in the Global Diversity Project class he teaches and the concurrent campus-wide contest.
“I think this project is very special educationally because most of the time, college professors, we talk to the students about all the problems in the world… I think it’s important to say that we’re not going to leave it there,” said Schoenhals, who also was the project manager for the United Nations competition.
The Appalachian State contest submission deadline is April 9. Judging by faculty members, mostly academics with backgrounds in social science, will take place in late April. Schoenhals hopes to draw at least 25 students to the campus-wide contest.