VAV’s current tactics are often met with avoidance. For many people, it is easier not to talk about or think about the issues VAV pursues. As Bowers and Ochs suggest, VAV has taken to tactics of promulgation. Knowing that there are countless organizations on campus that participate in “information picketing, erection of posters, and distribution of handbills and leaflets,” VAV must put a new spin on those tactics employed by so many other groups (“The Rhetoric of Agitation” 17). Staging an event like the Silent Witness Project will attract news media, show that this group is not solely about sitting and talking at people about domestic violence and sexual assault, but most importantly, it will get people’s attention.
The news seems unwilling to completely showcase issues of sexual assault and domestic violence because the images that go with them are too much for television. The media focuses more on the success stories and not the victims who are still stuck in the cycle of violence. Showcasing pictures of an abused woman or a rape victim, aside from risking great harm to the victims, is too sharp a topic for the nightly news and needs to be dulled considerably before making it into viewers’/readers’ homes. Finding a media source that would portray the non-success stories of this issue would do a great deal because “the selection of news about suffering and atrocities fits the classic formula: the media do not tell us what to think, but they do tell us what to think about” (Cohen 169).
VAV needs to push itself a little more. With the backing of The Counseling
and Mental Health Center, it may be able to get away with a little more than
other campus organizations, resulting in greater chances of the members accomplishing
their goals. The students who are involved in the movement need to act as a
constant reminder to older members that the target audience for VAV's tactics
is college-age people. Recognizing this will help them reach larger sections
of that target. Though still in its developmental stages, Voices Against Violence
has great potential for making change. Through its institutional support from
The University and the public’s general consensus that domestic violence
and sexual assault are societal evils, given the proper tactics, this group
will be able to make strides in the movement to reduce the number of dating/domestic
crimes.