In the newest edition of The Harvard Salient, I have an article about the Harvard College Women's Center, which just opened this fall. I have talked a little before on this blog about my opposition to the Women's Center, and now I'm reprinting here a shortened version. I wrote an assessment of the Women's Center thus far. While I'm not entirely disappointed by what I've seen thus far, I am still quite wary of the Center.
Anyway, I would love to hear your thoughts and opinions about women's centers in general. Did/do you have one at your college? If so, what was/is it like? I am interested in hearing about other centers. Here's part of the mission statement from Yale's own Women's Center:
"We work to break down societal gender structures and roles and to ensure every woman’s right to reproductive freedom, a voice, freedom of sexuality, a full range of health and social services, and economic, political and educational equality.
"The Yale Women’s Center seeks to enable all students on campus to find their feminist voices and to begin to identify them as an intrinsic part of them."
And here is my review of Harvard's:
"A Woman's Review of the Women's Center"
After much controversy over the past year, the Harvard College Women’s Center (HCWC) opened this fall. Most students felt that the greater need was for a student center where everyone would be able to interact, yet the College did not solicit the input of the average Harvard student in creating plans for a new Women’s Center. A name like “Women’s Center” immediately alienates half the Harvard population; only some curious men, perhaps lured by the promise of free printing, copying, and food, will venture into a land that has officially and exclusively been claimed in the name of women. Finally, the administration has offered only a hazy glimpse into what types of programming the Women’s Center would even offer—further puzzling those who attempt to discover exactly what void this new campus addition will fill.
Now that we have—despite our best efforts—a Women’s Center, we must assess what the HCWC has and has not accomplished since its grand opening a little more than a month ago. The physical space the Women’s Center occupies is surprisingly bright and comfortable for a Canaday basement. The central location certainly contributes to its appeal, which is in stark contrast to the new Student Organization Center at Hilles, located in the far-off Quad. The sofas are comfortable and the convenient access to computers, a printer, and a copy machine extends a warm welcome to the Harvard campus. The interns and staff are always cheerful and willing to help confused patrons.
A few things about the Center are immediately unsettling, however. The prominent display of condoms and dental dams is shocking, but not because of their presence—I’ve come to expect Harvard’s habit of throwing contraceptives at us, confident that we will behave responsibly, winking slyly at their implicit endorsement of sex. Rather, the condom bowl seated next to office supplies insinuates that sex is a casual, non-private matter no less mundane than using a stapler. Anyone looking for free protection is thus prevented from being discreet—contravening the conventional wisdom of placing most condom boxes in basement laundry rooms, out of the reach of prying eyes looking for the latest gossip.
While waiting to buy a planner from RUS, which has predictably set up camp in the Center, I was able to peruse the hundreds of titles displayed on the bookshelves. I came across such classics as Our Bodies, Ourselves and Naomi Wolf’s Promiscuities. I was dismayed to find not one book promoting an alternative view and a nobler notion of womanhood. I have a few books to recommend: Wendy Shalit’s A Return to Modesty, Phyllis Schlafly’s Feminist Fantasies, The Eagle Forum’s Equal Pay for Unequal Work, and especially Kate O’Beirne’s Women Who Make the World Worse: and How Their Radical Feminist Assault is Ruining our Schools, Families, Military, and Sports. I make these recommendations not in jest, but rather to suggest that if the Women’s Center genuinely wants to represent the points of view of all women at Harvard, then they need to extend their literature beyond Women, Gender, and Sexuality coursepacks and three books produced by the Kensington Ladies’ Erotica Society.
The Women’s Center has promised both to create original programming and to assist women-focused student groups with their own events. So far, the only non-student group program that I know was held there was a meditation workshop hosted by someone who provides the same services at the Bureau of Study Counsel—thus the program was not that original. If there have been other programs, then the Women’s Center has not adequately advertised them and should focus on reaching out more to the campus at large. I have seen “Co-sponsored by the Harvard College Women’s Center” slapped onto posters for an event featuring Katz of the Athens Boys Choir, a transgendered man who specializes in spoken word. Another event, hosted by Students for Choice and co-sponsored by the Women’s Center, naturally, featured Katha Pollitt, feminist and “prochoice badass.” The Women’s Center is also commendably co-sponsoring “Stopping for Directions: A Conversation about Career, Family and Success,” an event that may actually be of help to college-aged women.
According to Shirley Lemus Hufstedler ’07, an intern at the Women’s Center who attended a recent meeting of social conservatives within the Harvard Republican Club, the Women’s Center neither created nor funded these activities, but instead co-sponsored them because of their focus on gender. Hufstedler eloquently defended the HCWC to a group of skeptics, explaining that the Center is still getting organized and is doing more co-sponsorships than original programming. But how does adding the Women’s Center stamp of approval to a group’s event help it? Why would an organization want a co-sponsorship if the Center is not going to provide assistance in the form of resources (and not just space to hold an event)? The Women’s Center should instead be soliciting input from students on what they want to see, not the other way around.
Hufstedler and another intern are responsible for student-group outreach. Efforts to reach out to student organizations are praiseworthy, but perhaps not enough to break the apparent and natural bond between RUS and the HCWC. A meeting between HCWC interns and RUS early into the semester set a sour tone for the direction of the Women’s Center. A vague email advertisement for the meeting—who was hosting the meeting? RUS or the Women’s Center?—hinted that these two will be all-too-close bedfellows. (“What do you want to achieve from the Women’s Center? Are you feeling enraged about offensively critical op-eds? Confused? Under attack?”) The overwhelming presence of RUS and pro-feminist materials in the Center is more than a little disconcerting.
I realize that the HCWC is still in the stages of infancy and is working on developing programs and getting more input from student groups, but I do not think my expectations are unrealistic. Instead of, or perhaps in addition to, holding meditation seminars and hosting Female Sexuality meetings, the Women’s Center ought to implement programs that have life applications for women, such as cooking, child-rearing, finances, and work-family balance.
It looks like the Women’s Center is here to stay, at least for now. As someone who is ideologically opposed to the Center, I am an unlikely source of advice. No one asked me for it, but if the Center is not going anywhere for a while, then women wary of the feminist overtones often present in college Women’s Centers across the country deserve the opportunity to benefit from the resources provided as well. The only problem is that these resources need to be helpful to the average female Harvard undergraduate (and in the long run, when the College decides the establishment of a student center is a worthy pursuit, to Harvard men too). I fear that due to a spirit of collegiate feminism gone awry this will not happen. I challenge the Women’s Center to prove me wrong.
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