Violence against women is a Kentucky Ugly, a problem that continues to hold this state back from fulfilling its potential. We must work together to eradicate domestic violence from our society, so our friends and neighbors, children and grandchildren can live free from fear. The University of Kentucky, your flagship university, was called upon to build a Top 20 public research university by 2020.  A major part of that initiative has been our Center for Research on Violence Against Women.  We can not accomplish our grandest of dreams if our students, faculty and staff do not all feel safe on campus. That is why we invested $1.25 million in UK campus safety last year, four times more than any previous year.  At the same time, our center continues to conduct research, with the hope of improving lives of women across the Commonwealth.  Since its inception the center has brought in more than $5 million in new grants and contracts.

Lee T. Todd, Jr., 
President of the University of Kentucky
 

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Dear Men’s Fraternity,

     I have a favor to ask.  I don’t know if you happened to notice that I am one of "100 Good Guys" (their term not mine) that have agreed to raise $1000 a piece for the Bluegrass Domestic Violence Program which has a 32 bed shelter for women. I agreed to do this as a way to allow the good people of Central Kentucky to know that there is a Fraternity of Men that value women - not to get my name in the paper.  I want them to know that the men of Men’s Fraternity want to "live up."  We want to value women.  We want to make society a better place to live. What I’m asking, and please feel no pressure on this, but what I am asking is for as many guys as possible to give something.  If 100 men give $10 we have $1000.  I have committed $100 and hope that many of you can and will do something regardless of the amount given.  You can drop a check in the offering plate and mark it 100 Good Guys or give it to me at church, or drop in the mail to my attention at Crossroads, 4128 Todds Road, Lexington, KY 40509.  I really hope that we have an overwhelming response.  I would like to be able to report that we had 100, 150, or 200 men that responded to this worthy cause.  Authentic Men reject passivity, accept responsibility, lead courageously and expect God’s greater reward.  This is a chance to not be passive toward domestic violence, to accept responsibility to make life better for some, to lead our community courageously, and if we do - God will reward.

Hope you have a great summer.  Fathers’ Day weekend you’ll want to join us.  You’re going to hear some manhood language and a challenge to live up.

Together, 
Glen Schneiders

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Dear Good Guys,

     All honorable men must acknowledge that women deserve our utmost respect.  I have learned this fact within my own life, and also from the scriptures. In my own life, I have been blessed to have been surrounded by wonderful women- my wife, my mother, my three daughters, my sister, and my grandmothers.  These women have shown me, by their daily examples, much that is good and pure about womanhood.  Quite simply, their goodness deserves respect. Regardless of our own personal experiences, the scriptures shed even more light on the issue.  The following excerpts are from Gordon B. Hinckley, current President of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, from a talk entitled “The Women in Our Lives”: 

“We read in the book of Genesis … of that great, singular, and remarkable undertaking… There came first the forming of heaven and earth, to be followed by the separation of the light from the darkness. The waters were removed from the land. Then came vegetation, followed by the animals. There followed the crowning creation of man. Genesis records that ‘God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good’ (Gen. 1:31).

But the process was not complete. ‘For Adam there was not found an help meet for him. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; And the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man.  And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman’ (Gen. 2:20–23).

And so Eve became God’s final creation, the grand summation of all of the marvelous work that had gone before.

Notwithstanding this preeminence given the creation of woman, she has so frequently through the ages been relegated to a secondary position. She has been put down. She has been denigrated. She has been enslaved. She has been abused. And yet some few of the greatest characters of scripture have been women of integrity, accomplishment, and faith.

We have Esther, Naomi, and Ruth of the Old Testament. We have Sariah of the Book of Mormon. We have Mary, the very mother of the Redeemer of the world .

There are some men who, in a spirit of arrogance, think they are superior to women. They do not seem to realize that they would not exist but for the mother who gave them birth. When they assert their superiority they demean her. It has been said, ‘Man can not degrade woman without himself falling into degradation; he can not elevate her without at the same time elevating himself’.

Every woman is a daughter of God. You cannot offend her without offending Him.”

I wholeheartedly agree that the women in our lives deserve our very utmost respect.  Anything less is unacceptable.

Bishop Linton Wells, Winchester Ward, Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints

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"Domestic violence perpetrated by men against women and children is at its very core a cowardly act predicated on a variety of societal norms and expectations. We simply must come to view this behavior in the same realm as pedophilia and similar crimes against those unable to protect themselves."

William B. Drake, Jr.
President
Midway College