I am very proud to announce that in the coming year

Peace,

Ruth Sternglantz

English

What is V-Day?

V-Day is a campaign to end sexual violence against women and to proclaim Valentine's Day as the day to celebrate women and demand the end of abuse. Inspired by the world premiere of "The Vagina Monologues" at HERE, an off-Broadway theatre in New York City, the first V-Day was held in 1998 with a performance of the play by some of our country's biggest stars - Glenn Close, Whoopi Goldberg, Susan Sarandon, Winona Ryder, Lily Tomlin, and Calista Flockhart - who sought to raise awareness of and money for a situation that has become epidemic.

• In the United States, a woman is battered every 15 seconds.
• Every 21 hours on each college campus in the United States there is a rape.
• Women aged 16-24 run a greater risk of being raped than any other population group. More specifically, a woman is most likely to experience an assault during her first two months of college.
• Violent acts against women that cause physical harm are more likely to be perpetrated by someone they know than by a stranger.
• 83% of women with disabilities will be sexually assaulted in their lifetimes.

V-Day 1998 happened only in New York, but in 1999 and 2000, the V-Day College Initiatives marked the full arrival of the issue of violence against women to the rest of the world by bringing it to over 200 college campuses. The V-Day 2001 College Initiative is targeting even more schools, both in the United States and abroad. Cornell, Brown and Friedrich Schiller (Germany) Universities and Middlebury (Ms. Ensler's alma mater), Bennington and Mount Holyoke Colleges were among the dozens of schools that participated in the V-Day 2000 College Initiative, mounting performances of "The Vagina Monologues" on Valentine's Day 2000. Adelphi, Princeton, Carnegie Mellon and Odense (Denmark) Universities and Mills and Agnes Scott Colleges are already on board for the 2001 Initiative. Owing to the happy coincidence of alphabetical order, Adelphi's name is atop the list of several hundred participating colleges and universities on the official V-Day website. This is wonderful publicity for our school.

What are "The Vagina Monologues"?

Hailed by The New York Times as "funny" and "poignant" and by the Daily News as "intelligent" and "courageous," "The Vagina Monologues," which was first performed off-Broadway by Ms. Ensler, dives into the mystery, humor, pain, power, wisdom, outrage and excitement buried in women's experiences. Based on interviews with a diverse group of hundreds of women - from a Long Island antiques dealer to a Bosnian refugee - "The Vagina Monologues" brazenly explores questions often pondered, but seldom asked: Do women like their vaginas? What do women call their vaginas? What can you tell about a woman by the way she moans when she is aroused? Ms. Ensler has performed the play to great acclaim throughout the world - from Zagreb to Santa Barbara, from London to Seattle, from Jerusalem to Oklahoma City. Villard Books/Random House published "The Vagina Monologues," which includes a foreword by Gloria Steinem, in February 1998. A special V-Day edition of the play is being released in February 2001.