WSA director speaks at USG senate meeting

Shyann Murphy, director of the Women’s Student Assembly, defended the organization’s mission statement to the Undergraduate Student Government Senate at the Ronald Tutor Campus Center Tuesday night.

Murphy, a junior, showcased some of their signature events for this year. These include FemFest, which gives space to musicians and artists of marginalized backgrounds; Take Back the Night, which allows sexual assault survivors to speak and heal while advocating for a safer campus; and the upcoming Body Love Week, which encourages “radical self love.”

“The focus of Body Love Week this year is to recognize that body love is an ongoing process, so we’re having a lot of events that focus on healing and learning to love your body and learning to appreciate your body,” Murphy said. “As people, we’re constantly invaded with these messages that we’re not enough if our bodies are not enough.”

Murphy also explained that being a student at USC is a “huge social privilege,” and that the student body should challenge “oppressive structures of power.”

“An oppressive structure of power, in my mind, is anything that discourages and puts a barrier to the success that a group is capable of having,” Murphy said.

Murphy cited sexual assault as an example, arguing that women who fear being assaulted are negatively impacted in academic settings, with many victims dropping out of school.

USG Residential Senator Giuseppe Robalino said that the description of WSA on its online page sounded too forceful.

“I read a description of your group … where you say that you ‘work to dismantle oppressive structures of power,’” Robalino said. “Now my concern … is that considering that all the other programming board assemblies that have been featured on our page, the tone of their mission statement and descriptions are very much about inclusiveness, education, empowerment, but the wording [in the WSA page] could come off as fighting words.”

Murphy responded that the reason certain student sectors need inclusion is because they are being oppressed.

“By shying away from things that are oppressive structures of power, you are ignoring those structures and allowing them to continue,” Murphy said. “When I look at the campus survey and I see that … women who were sexually assaulted didn’t report their sexual assault because of the structures we have at USC, you don’t encourage them to report. Then that’s a structure of power.”

Murphy emphasized that she doesn’t mind the aggressiveness.

“I see my position and my budget as a way to dismantle that structure,” Murphy said. “Those might sound like fighting words, but when there are people who don’t feel comfortable and safe on our campus, then it is appropriate to have that fight.”

Furthermore, she expressed the importance of not caring about the tone of crucial ideas.

“There is this term called ‘tone policing,’” Murphy said. “It’s the idea that when somebody has a certain tone, you’re putting them down or saying my emotions and my tone and the way that I choose to express things doesn’t make my point any less valid or legitimate.”

After the meeting, Lena Melilo, WSA assistant director, said that microaggressions are one of the significant ways oppression manifests itself.

“You might not even notice them, but all these microaggressions add up,” Melilo said. “If you hear rape jokes on campus, and people say, ‘That’s just a joke,’ that makes you feel unsafe on campus. Or if you’re in a class, and the syllabus only has straight, white, upper middle-class men, then you might not feel like your voice is being heard.”

Murphy agreed that sometimes concerns about being too politically correct must be questioned.

“There are a lot of concerns about being ‘PC,’ and I think that sometimes [they] come from a place of not wanting to be challenged on everyday things that we just kind of assume,” Murphy said. “So it’s important, especially if you’re concerned that you’re being silenced, for you to question why it is so necessary for you to say that.”

Correction: An earlier version of this article stated that Sen. Giuseppe Robalino said the wording on the WSA page could come off as exciting. Robalino said it could come off as “fighting words.”  The Daily Trojan regrets the error.