Students gathered in the Common Grounds Café in Hamilton’s Dining Commons on Nov. 9 for “Speak Easy,” a night of poetry and spoken word about the emotions of college life.
The event is part of Movember, which raises awareness for testicular and prostate cancer on campus, as well as men’s suicide prevention throughout the month of November.
Despite being catered toward men’s health awareness, the majority of participants and attendees were women, according to Nikita Ramakrishnan, the student who made Movember a reality on UO’s campus.
The global charity Movember encourages participants to grow mustaches to raise money and awareness for men’s health. At UO, Movember came back for its second year to raise awareness and spark conversations about all aspects of men’s health.
Throughout November, various departments at UO under the direction of Nikita Ramakrishnan put on several events. These events ranged from health panels to dodgeball tournaments.
Spencer Atkinson, the housing community director of Hamilton Hall, created the “Speak Easy” poetry reading event for students.  “I’m a former high school English teacher, so doing spoken word poetry is something that is a familiar venue of mine for self-expression,” Atkinson said.
Atkinson said he believes men are not participating in certain events because they are socialized to suppress their emotions. “Men are taught not to express emotion. The only appropriate emotion is anger,” said Atkinson.
The “Speak Easy” event was intended to encourage men to express their feelings in a healthy way.
“The goal of the ’Speak Easy’ event is to create a space where it is okay to talk about emotions and to have feelings and to express them with words as opposed to your fists or with other forms of violence,” Atkinson said.
However, he continued by saying “events that are stereotypically male activities will attract a more male audience,” Atkinson said.
Ways we can change this trend lie in the ways we define “manhood” and what it means to be a man, according to Atkinson.
“If we can train young men that there is a myriad of ways of becoming a man, of being a man, of expressing ones man hood in healthy contexts, then we can shift all of those social ails in a positive direction.”
Emily Burns, a sophomore at UO, said more women are participating than men due to the fact that women tend to participate in more events.
Burns said, “There’s a trend that women participate in things more because of the idea of feminism. Feminism is supporting equality and is not for promoting just women’s health, but promoting men’s health as well.”