Thirteen percent of women in college have reported being stalked with 80% of survivors stating that they knew their stalker, according to Know Your IX, a project of Advocates for Youth.

   “Sometimes at night, I would feel scared to go out to my car at my old apartment complex. But now that I moved to a house, I feel a lot safer,” said Caitlin Rendel, a junior at Valencia College and Orlando resident. “I normally try to avoid being out places late at night by myself and if I am, I’ll make sure I carry pepper spray with me when I go, which makes me feel a little bit safer. At my house, my roommates and I have bats that we keep in our rooms.” 

  According to a report published by UN Women, approximately 736 million women have been victims of intimate partner violence or non-partner sexual violence.  Seventy six percent of women murdered by an intimate partner were initially stalked, with women aged 18-24 reporting the highest rate of stalking victimization. 

“I wouldn’t say domestic violence has gotten better or worse, but I will say that I feel people speak out against it more often now,” said Rendel. “We have a long way to go but I do think it’s a good start.” 

The body of Marcano, a Valencia College student, was found eight days after her initial disappearance from her apartment in Central Florida. 

 The Orange County Sheriff’s Department believes Armando Manuel Caballero, a maintenance worker at Arden Villas, is solely responsible for Marcano’s death. According to deputies, Caballero utilized a master key fob to access Marcano’s apartment and was waiting inside when she returned home. 

 “It’s critical to raise awareness around topics like domestic abuse and other forms of trauma, so we can support victims who reach out for our help,” said Nina Mendes, communications assistant at Valerie’s House, a nonprofit organization that provides counseling for grieving families in Naples, Florida.  “We can always work to better our understanding of grief and learn new ways to assist victims. Cases like these bring loss and bereavement into the spotlight.”

 The murder of Miya Marcano follows the death of 22-year-old Gabby Petito, whose body was found in Wyoming after her disappearance while on a cross-country road trip with her fiancé. The stories of both young women’s deaths sparked a resurgence in discussions regarding women’s safety within the country.  

  October is Domestic Violence Awareness Month and universities throughout the United States continue to implement new security protocols to protect their student population. 

 “Personally, my roommates and I have agreed to let everyone in our apartment know when we put in any maintenance requests, so we have a good idea of when people who work in our building should be entering and exiting our unit,” said Cassidy Batts, a junior at the University of Central Florida. 

 Mandatory sexual assault training, campus-wide safety buttons that summon university police and an increase of accessibility to Title IX resources have become commonplace throughout the country’s colleges, all serving as methods to protect young adults. 

 “A lot of people aren’t sure what to say or do in these types of situations,” said Mendes.

“By shedding light on these sensitive issues, we can provide various avenues of support to ensure lasting recovery and healing.”

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Picture being a Jewish teenager in Europe in the early 1940’s, hiding for four years in the basement of Nazi head quarters in Poland, eating nothing but potato peels from the garbage and avoiding the light for fear of detection. Some believe that can happen again.

“The incidents are increasing,” said Jonathon Pierce, 49, the International Spokesperson for the Jewish fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPI). “We’re talking about swastikas painted on houses and mezuzahs ripped off brothers doors, and these are just the most recent incidents, there are more.”

A study conducted by the Louis D. Brandeis Center and Trinity CollegeTrinity College study showed that over half of Jewsih college students experienced anti-Semitism.

Today brothers of the Fraternity AEPI endure congruent situations of anti-Semitism. With 185 chapters in five different countries (including the United States, Canada, France, Israel, and the United Kingdom) there have been over 1000 incidents of intolerance against Jewish fraternity brothers alone this year, according to the National Office of AEPI. Examples include swastikas sprayed on the brothers’ mailboxes at the University of Oregon.

Pierce, an alumnus of the AEPI Chapter at Vanderbilt University, wants his brothers to be proud of who they are and what they believe in. But he is also worried for their safety.

“We had to hire a security team to work with our brothers to make sure they’re safe in situations,” said Pierce. “It’s happening every day on every campus. Just two days after the anti – Israel vote at UC Davis to divest from companies who do business in Israel, there were swastikas painted on the AEPI house. That’s no coincidence. Every Jew should be concerned.”

According to the AEPI Chapter at Emory University, brothers now look behind their shoulders and are more careful when they’re out at bars since their house was spray painted with swastikas on the Jewish Holiday Yom Kippur.

But they don’t feel like this discrimination is anti-Israel. They feel like it’s anti-Semitic.

A junior, AEPHI sorority sister from New York University, who would not give her name because of fear of anti-Semitic backlash, said students from other universities will come on campus and hurl slurs at Jewish students.

During recruitment, her AEPHI sisters even worried that they were labeled the Jewish sorority during rush, bringing them negative attention. Other sororities swayed freshman girls from joining AEPHI because they were a Jewish sorority.

“I’m still proud to be a Jew and wear my AEPHI letters,” she said. “I do believe there will be another Holocaust. We said never again after the destruction of the second temple, after the Spanish Inquisition, and after the Holocaust. It just repeats itself.”

Allan Hall, 85, a Holocaust survivor from Krakow, Poland, believes that the Jewish people will always be outsiders.

Hall is in constant worry that the next generation will face the tragedy that he endured.

Allan Hall, 85, is a Holocaust survivor. Photo by Nicole Schubert

“I personally experienced anti-Semitism on a governmental and institutional basis,” said Hall. “But I’ve also experienced anti-Semitism in the United States in a major and minor way.”

While attending the University of Florida and joining the fraternity Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPI), Hall experienced perpetual incidents of anti-Semitism similar to today. Whether it was when he felt aghast to have his formal date feel his head for horns and his side for tails or to change his last name to Hall from Horowitz, he always felt like an outsider. But Hall believes without anti-Semitism, the Jewish people wouldn’t be as strong as they are.

“It’s those that hate us that keep us going,” said Hall.

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Avoiding long lines at the polls is one factor that affects student’s decision of where and how to vote.. Photo courtesy of Wikipedia.

Kate Locke has had to make two choices in the Nov. 6 presidential election: between President Barack Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney, and between North Carolina and Colorado.

Locke, 24, one of thousands of university students who attend schools outside their home states, has the right to register to vote in either state, according to a Supreme Court ruling.

Of the 12.9 million full-time students pursuing secondary degrees, the Department of Education estimates that approximately 13.7 percent, or about 1.8 million students, attend schools outside their home states.

North Carolina is where Locke grew up, but she attends the University of Denver in Colorado, which is considered a battleground state in the tight competition for Electoral College votes. She has an opportunity to decide how to make her vote most effective.

Of course, some students may not be aware of the Supreme Court ruling of 1979, in Symm v. United States, that students cannot be subjected to any voter registration requirements beyond those required of other residents. That decision affirmed the right of students to vote in either their home or their school state.

For students pondering where their votes could have the most impact, groups such as Count More may help. The Count More website asks students to list their school state and their home state. It then uses algorithms and information from Nate Silver’s FiveThirtyEight column in the New York Times to provide information about the 2008 election results in both states, the 2012 voter registration deadlines and a recommendation on where to vote, regardless of political allegiance.

Malini Runnells, 22, said she decided to vote in her home state of Virginia “since it is a battleground state and my current residency in Massachusetts has been solidified as a ‘blue’ state.”

For some students, however, practicality may be a bigger factor than politics in making the decision. They may find it difficult to get to the polls, worry over an absentee ballot not arriving, not want to change registration or miss a deadline.

Ana Barbic, 23, chose to vote in her school state of Pennsylvania, though she had intended to vote in her “highly influential” home state of Florida.

“I realized I was running out of time to sign up for an absentee ballot when someone in a parking lot offered to register me in PA,” Barbic said, “I just wanted to make sure I would register on time, so I took the opportunity. I also prefer the experience of voting in a precinct versus filling out a ballot in the mail.”

Even those students who succeed in registering on time may have trouble voting in states that have instituted new regulations requiring state-issued identification documents. School IDs may not count.

The Brennan Center for Justice, at New York University’s School of Law, is one of several institutions that pay special attention to the voting rights of students. In a September press release, the Brennan Center asserted that, since the 2008 election, 19 states have increased voting restrictions in various forms by minimizing early voting, setting stringent residency requirements or requiring IDs.

Court rulings in a number of states have set aside restrictions, at least for the 2012 elections. Sixteen states will require non-photo identification, but only students in Tennessee, Georgia, Indiana and Kansas need worry about strict photo ID requirements this year.

Even without such requirements, the turnout among young voters is usually modest. The most recent Gallup poll of young voters found that only 58 percent of those aged 18-29 said they would vote on Nov. 6, a 20 point drop from the unusually high turnout for young voters in the 2008 election.

In the battle of home-state versus school-state for the 2012 election, students have had to add voter identification and other restrictions to the list of items to be considered.

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Using their own cell phones, NYU students for Barack Obama hold phone banks at the university’s Kimmel Center at least four times a week.

New York University students made 900 calls to voters in just a single day recently, urging them to cast their ballots for Barack Obama – in Ohio.

When they’re not on the phone, they run “dorm storms” – going door-to-door in residence halls – or staff tables around campus to help other students learn how to register to vote or to send in absentee ballots.

The youth vote was crucial to Obama’s victory in 2008; he captured a bigger share of it than any other Democratic candidate in the past three decades. In a tight election this year, both Obama and Republican nominee Mitt Romney are targeting younger voters.

With polls predicting that the president will easily win New York State, NYU’s Students for Barack Obama don’t waste their time on local calls. They focus on Ohio, with its tight race for Electoral College votes that may prove decisive in the Nov. 6 election.

These students are engaged in politics, but researchers believe that civic education geared towards young people is crucial to getting more of young voters to the polls. That’s where groups like Rock the Vote and the Brennan Center for Justice come in.

The Brennan Center at NYU’s law school in Greenwich Village, released a student voter guide detailing each of the 50 states’ residency, registration, identification and absentee voting requirements. With many college students attending out-of-state schools, understanding the voting laws in two states and deciding which state to vote in can be difficult. The guide aims to help young voters fulfill eligibility requirements before Election Day.

The guide includes an interactive map of the U.S. with information on each state’s voting laws and a prompt to promote the guide on social media sites. The Brennan Center’s senior communications coordinator, Erik Opsal, said this year’s guide makes much more use of new social technologies and interactive features than the 2008 guide did.

“We want to make sure that this guide is more user-friendly, works on a mobile device and (is) easier to share on social media. Young people use the Internet more than any other demographic,” Opsal said.

Victor Li, secretary of College Democrats at NYU, finds the guide useful.

“I think the Brennan Center for Justice’s Student Voting Guide is an excellent resource which every student should be familiar with. There can be no shortage of organizations or volunteers working to get out the vote. I believe the more people (who) vote, the better,” Li said.

On Election Day, student activists from the College Democrats and Students for Barack Obama plan to go to Pennsylvania, another hotly contested state, to get out the vote by knocking on doors, working polls and calling voters. Both groups also work closely with Obama for America.

The Brennan Center works with the youth-oriented organization Rock the Vote to promote the guide. Other youth organizations and student newspapers also get the word out about the guide. In the past, Rock the Vote registered more than five million youth voters using grassroots mobilization and new media campaigns.

Zoe Bridges-Curry, a Rock the Vote spokeswoman, says the Brennan Center’s student voter guide is especially significant because of public confusion over voting regulations. Federal courts have rejected some of the restrictions states passed on identification, early voting and registration – including voter ID laws in South Carolina, Texas and Wisconsin.

“While many of the new voting restrictions won’t be in effect on election day, thanks to challenges from organizations like the Brennan Center and Rock the Vote, these laws are still creating confusion for young people about whether they’re eligible to vote and what they need to take with them to the polls,” Bridges-Curry said.

Both Rock the Vote and the Brennan Center target 18- to 29-year-olds. In the 2008 presidential election, youth voter turnout increased to 51 percent from 48.5 percent in 2004, according to The Center for Information and Research on Civic Learning and Engagement (CIRCLE). However, a recent Pew Research Center poll found that only 63 percent of young registered voters said they will vote this year—a drop from 72 percent in 2008.

CIRCLE, a research organization based at Tufts University, also recently found that only nine states require civics education and testing as a high school graduation requirement. Researchers believe the lack of emphasis on social studies leaves young people uninformed on voting laws and registration. In a poll conducted this summer, the research organization also reported that “80 percent of the young voters were either unable to answer or incorrect about their state’s early registration rules.”

CIRCLE researcher Surbhi Godsay says that, for maximum impact on future generations, civic education and testing should be required throughout primary and high school.

“Young people are growing up in a nation with extremely complex issues, as well as a nation with a political system which is increasingly difficult to navigate,” Godsay said. “Young people need to be provided with the knowledge and skills to be able to solve these problems, both individually and collaboratively.”

Education programs are one way to reach young voters, but candidates also have to engage them. A Pew Research Center survey reports that voters under 30 years old prefer Obama over Romney by a margin of 59 percent to 33 percent. However, a Harvard Institute of Politics poll found that young Romney supporters are more likely to cast a ballot.

Romney and Obama have both campaigned on college campuses. The Obama campaign launched a campus tour in August, and in October, he visited Ohio State University to mobilize the youth vote in that swing state.

“I think a question for the next couple of weeks will be how much investment the Romney and Obama campaigns will make in reaching out to young people,” Godsay said, “and that may make the difference in getting youth to turn out to the polls.”

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