Campus organization It’s On Us (IOU), kicked off the semester with its event, “Sex, Drugs, and Rock n’ Roll” on Aug. 27 in Village Park.
IOU is a campus organization that focuses on sexual harassment and domestic violence prevention and awareness. According to director of health services Rebecca Harper, the event is designed to be a fun way for new and returning students to learn about resources.
“One of the things in Student Life we’ve been trying to do is install more traditions . . . things that will come year after year,” Harper said. “We look forward to the first week of school and ‘Sex, Drugs, and Rock n’ Roll.’”
Harper said the University of Connecticut was what originally gave her the idea for the event after they had a similar event which she modified to better fit Point Park University.
“I wanted to do basically a safety fair,” Harper said, “but who would want to go to a safety fair? That sounds so lame. I wouldn’t go.”
The event was similar to last year ‘s, which was its first iteration, with a few exceptions. This year, IOU managed to get a few artists from Pioneer Records to perform live music. This didn’t happen last year because IOU couldn’t get it all straightened out in time, according to Harper. They also added a new section this year.
“The new area [went] along with Welcome Week’s theme of ‘Alice in Wonderland,’ and it’s the Mad Hat Therapeutic Lounge,” Elliott Geary, president of IOU, said. “It [was] all lit up in black lights with some psychedelic decorations.”
“Inside [had] intention crystals that people [could] make. We [had] some DIY aromatherapy that everyone can make that kind of goes into that like Absolem forest kind of situation without anything we don’t actually want to give our students.”
Many students showed up to the event. There was even a line at the check-in table before it officially began.
One student that went was first-year Molly Fircak. “I came to the event because I heard there was a lot of free stuff,” Fircak said. While at the event, Fircak also visited the table for Resolve Crisis Services, which provided information for suicide prevention and other crisis information.
“I took a lot of pictures and things over there because you never know,” Fircak said.
Another student, sophomore Layla Raye, also visited some of the tables.
“I feel like I learned a lot about suicide prevention and how to get a free T-shirt,” Raye said.
Raye also said they had fun at the photobooth while at the event.
Geary acknowledged the name of the event can seem daunting.
”Obviously the name is a little jarring to some of ourstudents, but truthfully it does set the scene for the entire year,” Geary said.
“One of the goals of It’s On Us is to make these conversations about sexual assault and domestic violence easier to have, especially if students are experiencing those issues,” Geary said.
