York

After speaking at York University, One in Four became in international speaking group! We were all ecstatic to take our presentation to Toronto, Canada.

To get to York, we left the RV in a New Jersey parking lot and flew to Toronto. When we arrived in Toronto, we were picked up by a car service and carried through the city to the York campus, a campus that serves over 32,000 students. The drive through Toronto gave us a good notion of the size of the city...huge.

Once we got to York, we met our contact, Janis. She showed us to where we would be spending our nights at York- four graduate apartments complete with kitchen, porch, bed and bathroom. Let me emphasize- we each had our own apartment. You can imagine the level of excitement. I think each of us shouted moments after unlocking our apartment door. We had only been at York for about twenty minutes and already we felt right at home.

Janis took us out to lunch and explained the campus culture and some differences between college in the States and Canada. Our first presentation would be the following day, giving us a a fair amount of time to enjoy Toronto. We rode the train into the heart of the city and meandered through the downtown. We got to take a look at the University of Toronto, a very beautiful campus. After that, we moved onto the CN Tower. We rode to the top and looked out over the city at sunset. We felt like a couple of world travelers enjoying an international tourist destination.

The next day we gave four presentations. We were lucky to have much support from the faculty as each presentation had a counselor and student leaders. On the second day, we did five presentations. One of the presentation was open, giving faculty the chance to better understand our organization. We were met with a great deal of enthusiasm. Both the faculty and the students showed an interest in starting a chapter at York.

We had a lot of fun in Toronto. By the end of our time, we felt very close to our contact, Janis. She treated us incredibly well and it felt wonderful to have someone so excited to work with us to better the campus environment. We also met wonderful student from SASSLE, York's sexual assault help line. They are each doing important work at York and we are thankful for their sacrifice of time and energy to better their campus.

So, we'd all count York a huge success. After speaking with over nine hundred students in just two days, we were exhausted but satisfied. We enjoyed our time, our presentations, all the hot coffee, good food, personal bathrooms, and great people. But even though we had to say goodbye to all that, it felt nice to be back home (RV in various Wal-Mart parking lot).