The 19,000 people who filled Madison Square Garden in New York City on Saturday were asked to stand if they, or someone they knew, had been a victim of sexual assault.
“Everyone in the entire place stood up,” international studies junior Melanie Olmsted said.
“It was an extremely moving experience.”
According the National Organization for Women, 132,00 women are sexually assaulted each year.
Olmsted and 14 other MSU students traveled to New York for Vagina Day and the showing of the “Vagina Monologues”. Written by Eve Ensler, the monologues feature 15 stories women perform about experiences with sexuality.
“The “Vagina Monologues” are so wonderful because they explore taboos that aren’t normally expressed,” Olmsted said. “They have views on being a woman and what that means.”
Oprah Winfrey, Queen Latifah, Ricki Lake, Claire Danes, Jane Fonda and Teri Hatcher are just a few celebrities Olmsted said attended and performed in the monologues.
Olmsted is the co-director of the Women’s Council and is also a co-director of MSU’s production of the monologues.
The trip to New York was the first in a series of vagina-inspired events leading up to the campus production of the play. Women’s Council’s version be performed at 3 p.m. Feb. 25 at the Auditorium.
Zoology junior Hillary Noyes said the MSU production of the monologues is something that has filled her life for the past two years, and she said it was only fitting that she attend the production in New York.
“The work I do with it here is the most fulfilling thing in my life right now,” Noyes said. “New York was just another opportunity to be involved in this great event.”
As the director of the production at MSU, Noyes developed friends on the Vagina Monologues’ e-mail list serve, where she told them about her experiences as the director.
Her thoughts were eventually shared with Ensler and she was asked if they could be published in a reprinting of the Vagina Monologues’ book, which came out earlier this month.
“It was really overwhelming to be in a nationally read book,” Noyes said. “It is so much fun.”
Patti Wheeler, English and theater freshman and Women’s Council member, said it was her first time attending a professional performance of the play. But it was something she always wanted to do.
“I wanted to go because I believe in this movement so much,” she said. “I wanted to be in an environment where everyone felt the same way that I did.”
Both Olmsted and Wheeler said they left the New York production feeling like they could do something to make a difference for women and victims of sexual assault.
“I felt like I could in fact make a change,” Wheeler said. “But more importantly it made me realize that something needed to be done.”
