Students bring UNF’s Girl Up to campus

[caption id="" align="alignnone" width="212"] equalityenforcers.org[/caption] The United Nations-partnered organization Girl Up at Seton Hall continues to attract student involvement for the fall 2016 semester after its first interest meeting on April 7. The first interest meeting gathered about 20 students interested in joining Girl Up on campus, one of which was a male, according to Cheyenne Crawford, president, and Kristal Corona, vice president. Crawford, a junior political science major, and Corona, a sophomore diplomacy and international relations major, separately explained Girl Up’s mission and its recent activity on campus. “Through Girl Up’s partnership with the United Nations, education, health, safety and leadership are the true pillars of the organization as a whole. Through Girl Up campus, student leaders create the ability to support this mission by educating their campus and providing leadership to young girls and women in their community,” Crawford said in an email interview. The meeting included discussions on how to improve campus, Girl Up events on campus for next semester and how to educate SHU on young women’s human rights, according to Crawford. “The message we hope to spread is the idea of being comfortable with being a woman. And by that I mean, finding security in who someone is and the situations that they are bound to face, knowing how to overcome them and how to understand that just because they face them, it does not mean that they are in any shortcoming,” Corona said in an email interview. Crawford said, “We fully intend on creating Girl Up as a very active organization on this campus. Our first event, held last fall with about 80 attendees really proved to those of us passionate about Girl Up, that it will have a strong presence at Seton Hall. Beginning next fall, we will be holding consistent general body meetings, educational events on a variety of issues, pertaining to girls both locally and internationally, as well as mentoring opportunities with young girls in Newark.” A second interest meeting is set to take place at 7:30 p.m. on April 21 in Fahy Hall room 131. Courtney Jenney, a freshman journalism major, said she is interested in joining the club. “There’s a gender equality club on campus and what they do is a lot of women around the world focused issues, but they don’t do anything with safety and comfort in being a women, which will be good. It feels like feminism is a trend all of the sudden (even though it should have been around forever) so I think a lot of people will be interested in joining,” Jenney said. Alexandra Gale can be reached at alexandra.gale@student.shu.edu.