Campus awareness group challenges male stereotypes Campus awareness group challenges male stereotypes
Student group, A Men’s Issue, believes the biggest problem at Syracuse University is that everyone likes to pretend like sexual violence does not occur.
‘No one on campus talks about it,’ said Sacchi Patel, co-president of AMI. ‘Rape is a word people don’t use at all because we like to think it doesn’t happen.’
AMI is trying to educate the campus on issues just like these.
The group made, up of nineteen students and Cpl. Joe Shanley from the Department of Public Safety, was founded on advocating for women’s rights.
‘Our main goal is to end sexual violence and rape and shift societal focus,’ said Benjamin Bradley, AMI co-president and senior social work major. ‘Men need to take an active role.’
Halfway through his freshman year, Bradley became friends with Patel, now a senior psychology and child family studies major. Now, roommates Bradley and Patel are co-presidents of the group.
‘If you’re a man in America there is an image that you have to be strong and dominate and you can’t express your emotions,’ Bradley said. ‘All men go through that and SU is no different and that sort of thing starts sexual violence and rape.’
AMI was founded in 2003 after Don McPherson, former NFL quarterback and 1988 SU alumnus, presented his annual address to incoming freshmen about masculinity and sexual violence. For many of the men in the group, it was McPherson’s speech that motivated them to join.
Jacob Bartholomew, now a cultural foundations of education graduate student, joined AMI as an undergraduate at SU because of McPherson.
‘Here is this super-jock athlete who played in NFL and now he is doing all this work,’ Bartholomew said. ‘I was blown away by how passionate he was about the issue and that really came across in his talk.’
Two years later Bartholomew met Bradley. For the latter, AMI is a place to understand and define what it means to be a man.
Bartholomew, who has now been an active group member for six years, said that AMI has, and continues to be, a safe place for men.
‘I think our biggest goal is to be place where men can explore what it means to be a man,’ he said. ‘The group changes men in that they have a new way of thinking and that’s an impact that will last the rest of their lives.’
Last August, AMI welcomed Cpl. Shanley to their weekly meetings. Shanley said he wanted to get involved to be both an educator and a student.
‘Like anything else, communication and respect are two of the main forms of developmental skills we have,’ Shanley said. ‘For me, in life, learning to communicate is only going to enhance my personal goals. It’s all about respect.’
Shanley, father of three sons and a daughter, said AMI helps him be a better role model for his children.
‘These young gentlemen look to me and help me by letting me into their lives and telling me the hard decisions they have to make on a daily basis.’
