Welcome to Willamette

Jennifer McKenzie ’08 will spend the next year meeting women on four continents, courtesy of the prestigious and unconventional Thomas J. Watson Fellowship. Each year, 50 students receive the fellowship for a wanderjahr anywhere in the world. One of the only stipulations: Recipients can’t step back over the U.S. border for 12 months.

McKenzie’s project will take her to Mexico, India, Spain and South Africa, where she will work with theater companies and community and college groups who are producing The Vagina Monologues and explore the ways individual cultures have adapted the play to speak to universal women’s issues. She’ll document interviews — in Spanish and English — with performers and audience members, using film and still photography. The play, based on interviews with more than 200 women, has been shown in 80 countries and translated into more than 45 languages. It has also raised more than $50 million to support women and girls who have survived sexual violence.

Women’s issues are nothing new to McKenzie, who volunteers on an almost full-time basis with campus groups such as S.H.E. (Strength, Health, Equality). The student organization coordinates numerous campus events that promote empowerment and gender equality, such as International Women’s Day, Take Back the Night, Love Your Body Days, the Sexual Assault Forum, Breast Play and The Vagina Monologues. McKenzie also co-founded a hotline, S.A.R.A. (Sexual Aggression Response Allies), which trains campus peers to listen, support and educate survivors and their families about local and state resources.

“Events like the annual Take Back the Night open mic, where survivors are invited to tell their stories, teach me the deep power in breaking silence,” McKenzie says. “In the last three years as I watched friends bravely speak their hearts, I realized how personal change is possible and how perspectives can be broadened. These programs open the minds of those listening, and healing becomes possible.”