Collegiate Times

Students and scholars from around the world will gather at Virginia Tech today to promote peace.

Tech will host “Cultivating Peace: A Symposium for Violence Prevention.” The event will be held at the Inn at Virginia Tech, and is free and open to the public.  

“We have a really packed agenda,” said Amy Splitt, administrator for Tech’s Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention.   

“Cultivating Peace” will feature students presenting research on the theme of violence prevention. 

Topics include violence prevention, sustainable development, harnessing social media for conflict resolution, university community partnerships and creatively fostering nonviolence through the arts and literature. 

Student presentations will range from speeches and papers to multimedia projects. Each presentation will be approximately 15 to 20 minutes in length.   

The symposium will feature students from around the U.S., and from as far as England and Argentina.

“What we are most hoping for is that a community of colleagues will start to build itself among the students presenting at the symposium,” Splitt said.  

Sophia Teie, senior psychology major at Tech and president of Students for Non-Violence, will be presenting her project, “Teaching Tolerance,” tomorrow with two other Tech students. 

“Its important to know what peace can be,” Teie said. “It’s no longer some fantasy,”       

Dan Olweus, research professor in psychology from the University of Bergen in Norway, will be the keynote speaker. Olweus will kick off the event at the opening presentation this evening.    

“Dr. Olweus is an expert on bullying,” Teie said. “He has created a program that is widely accepted,”     

“Cultivating Peace,” co-sponsored by the Lacy Foundation and the Atlantic Coast Conference Intercollegiate Academic Consortium, is organized by Tech’s Center for Peace Studies and Violence Prevention and Tech’s Students for Non-Violence.  

A version of this article appeared in the Nov 12 issue of the Collegiate Times.