Next time you’re inside a vagina, take a picture.

The cast and crew of Syracuse University’s production of the ‘Vagina Monologues’ can help – they’re promoting this weekend’s shows in the lobby of Schine Student Center. Their booth flows with glitter, glue and pipe cleaners for a ‘decorate-your-vagina’ activity, but its main attraction is a 6-foot vagina.

Passersby and vagina aficionados can donate a dollar to stick their heads through a hole cut near the top of the decorative, cardboard creation. The ‘Vagina Monologues’ crew will take a digital picture and e-mail it to them later.

‘The giant vagina is brand new this year,’ said Sunny Hernandez, a senior sociology major and the director of the play.

This is the production’s third year at SU and its latest publicity stunt has attracted an array of confused and curious students.

‘There’s the typical frat boy types,’ she said as seniors Shaun Bensol and Chris Nawricki darted across the lobby towards the giant vagina.

Nawricki donated his dollar and jumped behind the cardboard reproductive organ. At about 2:30 p.m. yesterday, he was the 13th person to make the dive.

‘We saw a big vagina,’ said Bensol, a television, radio and film major, ‘so we decided to check it out.’

And though Bensol and Nawricki likely savor the vagina for different reasons than Hernandez, they’re all in it for the charity.

‘My experience with the giant vagina was fulfilling,’ said Nawricki, an information studies major. ‘I think it’s a great cause. That’s why I made a donation.’

This weekend’s ‘Vagina Monologues’ productions kick off V-Week, a series of educational and inspirational fund-raisers sponsored by Students Advancing Sexual Safety and Empowerment. SASSE (pronounced ‘sassy’) spearheads four big events throughout the week.

Last year the events raised $12,000, Hernandez said. This year SASSE will split its proceeds between the SU R.A.P.E. Crisis Center, the Rape Crisis Center of Syracuse, the Vera House, Planned Parenthood, the Chadwick House and an international organization. That organization aims to help Mexican women that ‘disappear’ and are sold into prostitution or slavery.

‘That is the international spotlight this year, so we’re donating 10 percent of our proceeds to that,’ Hernandez said as she knitted a scarf in the shadow of her giant, pubic billboard.

A few members of SASSE taught the rest to knit, she said, and they’re now hard at work making scarves to sell at the show.

‘We will be single-handedly keeping Syracuse warm,’ she said.

Despite the absurdity of the latest addition to the student center, it seems most of the university community has warmed up to it. Even so, two faculty members in the lobby were too uncomfortable to talk about it.

The SASSE crew admitted that in past years the Food Services staff has asked them to move the word ‘vagina’ away from the Schine Dining Center. They say Food Services thought it was unappetizing.

‘I think it enables and excites the appetite,’ one vagina decorator chimed in. ‘Makes you salivate.’

Madeline Vigoa, a senior Spanish and television, radio and film major, was working at the Caribbean Student Association booth next to SASSE’s display yesterday. She praised the giant vagina as an effective marketing technique, and said it is subtle enough to keep it from being awkward or offensive. She also commended the ‘Vagina Monologues’ booth for attracting more attention than her own.

‘I’m interested in going over there to know when they’re having their show,’ she said. ‘But not to take a picture.’

Published on February 4, 2004 at 12:00 pm