The Women's Committee of the Acadia University Faculty Association will join with students and the community to take action on violence against women and to commemorate the 14 women brutally killed during the Montreal Massacre in1989.

December 6 marks that day that Marc Lepine entered l'ecole Polytechnique and gunned down 14 female engineering students. He detailed his reason in a suicide note, in which he stated that he wanted to kill feminists for what they had done to men and to society.

"We remember this day to commemorate the women who were killed and to remind us of the insidiousness of violence against women," explains Dr. Phyllis Rippeyoung, who helped organize the event.

Campus and community members are invited to take part in the Ceremony of Remembrance to be held Monday, December 6 at 4 p.m. at Just Us! Coffee Merchants, located on Main Street in Wolfville.

The ceremony will include live music, Acadia faculty and student speakers, and a memorial to the 14 women who died. Warm beverages will be served.

"Violence against women takes on many forms," says Dr. Rippeyoung, "be it murder as in the recent murders committed in Ottawa by Col. Russell Williams; in the daily violence women face in their homes around the world; in sexual assaults on university campuses;  in the grinding poverty that comes about when women are divorced or widowed with children and they have few job prospects;  in the objectification of women in the media;  and in the silencing of women's experiences and voices throughout our culture.

"This day reminds us why feminism and the fight for women's equity continue to be an important part of creating a just society."

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For more information, please contact:

Dr. Phyllis Rippeyoung:

phyllis.rippeyoung@acadiau.ca

(902) 585-1431