Hermandad de Sigma Iota Alpha, Inc. (SIA) hosted an event on Tuesday, Feb. 5, to educate the campus on feminism. This was an educational event and discussion open to anyone on campus and aimed at creating a better understanding of what it means to be a feminist.

Amber Marrero, a junior cyber systems major, and the executive assistant and secretary for SIA coordinated the event. She created an interactive presentation that talked about the origins and history of feminism. Students who attended learned new things about feminism that they had never realized before. For example, about different types of feminism like liberal, radical, and black.

“I didn’t know there were different types of feminism, it was a very educational presentation,” said Natalie Aparicio, a junior criminal justice and national security double major.

Marrero has gone to women’s marches back home in the Bronx, New York, including one over winter break. She became passionate about putting on this event for students because she noticed that in society people will use the term “feminist” in many different ways. According to Marrero, some use it to mean women’s equality, some use it in more of an extreme way, and some do not really know what the term means.

“If people are going to identify as something they should understand it, and have a reason for doing so,” said Marrero.

This event was a way for people to understand this popular term that gets used so much today. The presentation talked about the four waves of the feminist movement and opened up discussion about what feminism is like in the fourth wave today. There were also videos played, one was women age 5 to 50 define feminism in one word and another one was called “I am a feminist, but I am not ____.” This sparked discussion as students went around the room filling in the blank.

“I liked the idea that we were talking about something that isn’t talked about much, and got to learn the facts,” said Clarie Berantuo, a sophomore psychology major.