"We Just Want to Say Thank You": Amy Rendon’s Family Speaks Out Following Campus Support

A petition that launched on March 30 quickly garnered thousands of signatures calling for the removal of Bryan Vargas, a Marist College football player who a fellow student alleged assaulted her off-campus.

That student has now revealed herself as Amy Rendon, a Marist freshman from New Jersey.

Rendon’s family released a statement to the Circle: “We just want to say thank you for the continued support on campus towards Amy. We are beyond proud of her for being strong enough to allow her story to be shared. We stand with all the victims of dating violence and our hope is that every girl can feel safe on Marist’s campus.”

“I had countless ideas of what I wanted to do here on campus the first semester, and it didn’t go through,” Klanell Lee ’23, the Title IX student representative, said. “It sucks to be here today, but I can tell you that I’m here with you, standing with you and fighting for you all.”

As of the afternoon of March 31, an email from Vice President for Student Affairs Deborah DiCaprio announced that the student accused of assault was no longer a student at the college. On April 28, Rendon is scheduled to attend a court hearing to request a permanent restraining order against Vargas.

“Personally, I’d like to say I am beyond proud of the stance Marist students and alumni are taking on this,” Katherine Posada, Rendon’s cousin, told the Circle. “I am not an alumni and never even thought of going to the school, but being from North Jersey, I never heard anything but good things about Marist. To hear so many stories from girls in less than two weeks is beyond heartbreaking and I’ll do whatever I can to help Amy and every girl on campus feel secure.”

The day after this announcement, Cat O’Brien ‘21 texted fellow senior Sam Williams: “Wanna plan a protest?” The seniors, moved by Rendon’s story, quickly organized a demonstration against sexual assault and domestic abuse. Under the name “Marist Stand Up Speak Out,” they took to Instagram to create a movement, unaffiliated with Marist or any campus club or organization. Right away, they contacted clubs like Marist It’s on Us, Purple Thread, Marist Women’s Rugby and the Marist College Dance Ensemble to further the movement’s reach.

On Wednesday, April 7 at 12 p.m., between 75 and 100 student protestors arrived at the Marist green. O’Brien and Williams passed a megaphone around to participants who read their signs and engaged in chants like “Title IX needs more dimes” and “Protect the Pack doesn’t stop the attack.” Signs at the protest called for support for a Title IX Student Advisory Board and funding for Title IX. Others included statistics –– for instance, that 97% of women ages 18 to 24 in the UK have experienced sexual harassment in a public space.

Haley Capalbo ’23 and Judi Musanje ’23 came together to the Marist green for the demonstration.

Members of the Marist Football team attended the protest and addressed the crowd. “I just want to speak on behalf of the football team...we don’t stand for this,” Teddy Wright ‘21 said. “We can never be in your shoes, but we just want to tell you guys that we stand with y’all and we’ll be here every step of the way, and we don’t stand for that type of behavior.” Wright’s teammate Arthur Pinckney ‘22 told the women in the crowd that while he does not know what it’s like to be in their shoes, “I do understand what it is to be in a struggle, and ya’ll are in a struggle and I’m here to fight with you. I’m going to try to get a lot more people out here, a lot more men out here.”

According to the 2019 Annual Security & Fire Safety Report published December 2020, 25 cases of rape and 14 cases of fondling occurred on campus property between 2017 and 2019, with 23 rape cases and 12 fondling cases taking place at on-campus student housing. One rape took place on public property in 2017. Six occurrences of dating violence occurred on campus property and five occurred in on-campus student housing in 2019, alone.

“I think that a lot of the adults and people in power at Marist don’t understand the severity of the danger and the risk that women face on campus, and they think it’s not something that’s always in the back of our minds,” O’Brien said.

Event co-organizer Cat O’Brien ’21 led the attendees in a chant: “Title IX needs more dimes.”

Beyond Marist, abuse on college campuses remains an ever-prevalent issue. According to the National Domestic Violence Hotline, a majority of college students (57%) who said they have experienced dating violence and abuse said it happened during college. More than half of college women (52%) said that they know “a friend who’s experienced violent and abusive dating behaviors including physical, sexual, digital, verbal, or other controlling abuse.” Grace Leavitt ‘22 leads Marist’s chapter of It’s On Us, the nation’s “largest nonprofit program dedicated to college sexual assault prevention and survivor support.” The chapter joins other campus organizations in advocating for a Title IX Student Advisory Board, and Leavitt personally said that she wants to see better training for students and faculty.

From left to right: Alexa Mazza ’22, Amy Dugan ’22 and Kevin Sayegh ’22 attended the demonstration as members of the Marist Moderates. Sayegh, president of the club, said that the board decided Marist needed “an institutional type of change” and began advocating for a Title IX Student Advisory Board.

“I think that freshman year, we have to watch a few videos, and everyone kind of laughs over them and doesn’t pay attention, and that’s pretty evident when there’s so many cases of sexual assault on our campus as well as campuses everywhere,” Leavitt said. “This is a national problem, but our school is so small that I think it’s something that we should be able to combat better than we are.”

The Marist Moderates created a petition, accruing over 880 signatures in support of a Title IX Student Advisory Board. The Circle spoke with Christina Daniele, the Interim Title IX Coordinator at Marist, about the proposal.

Enna Spivak ’21 carried a sign encouraging students to scan and sign a petition in hopes of establishing a Title IX Student Advisory Board.

“The federal and state laws dictate how the process needs to be. If the intent of an advisory board is to potentially develop process, that’s not really something that is afforded to us under the current law, and the way that they’re written,” Daniele said. She added that students have been involved in the office before in research, programming, and building training.

Marist Stand Up Speak Out will hold another demonstration on the Marist green on Wednesday, April 14. Students Revolt –– another group on campus that had previously hosted a march for Breonna Taylor in September –– announced its plans for a demonstration on the Marist green on Thursday, April 15, at 6 p.m.