Instead of the familiar Vagina Monologues production, the organizers of Vanderbilt's 12th annual V-Day event presented a new play called A Memory, a Monologue, a Rant, and a Prayer, a program with a more subdued title that still stayed true to the V-Day message about serious issues such as spousal abuse, child abuse, rape as a tool of war and human trafficking.
The Vanderbilt Lambda Association is hard at work preparing for next month's Rainbow ReVU, its flagship program for raising campus awareness about sexual orientation, gender identity and policy issues. This year's highlights include a keynote speech by political activist Staceyann Chin and the annual Pride Banquet.
Since the reinstatement of the death penalty in Tennessee in 2000, two individuals serving on death row have been exonerated. In the country as a whole, 135 people on death row have been released because of wrongful conviction since 1973, a figure that boils down to roughly one exoneration for every nine executions performed.
A unique educational program at Vanderbilt has allowed the university to give back to the Nashville community by opening up new opportunities for some of the area's brightest public high school students. Through the School for Science and Math at Vanderbilt (SSMV), many of the students' projects have qualified them for finalist status at national and state level science competitions.
Vanderbilt ONE, part of the national ONE campaign co-founded by musician and humanitarian Bono, emerged on the campus philanthropic scene this year to tackle an array of problems associated with preventable disease issues ranging from maternal and child health to clean water and sanitation.
