Women's Center searches for new direction

Countless Yalies pass by the Women's Center on Elm Street every day, but many still don't know what the organization represents. In their ongoing process to define the mission of the Women's Center, its coordinators want the center to become more politically active on campus.

JOSEPH MONTGOMERY/YH The Women's Center hopes to take a more prominent political role on campus.

"Recently at the Women's Center, we have come to regard the tenure struggle as our main platform," center co-coordinator Christine Kim, SY '99, said. "Currently, only 11 percent of Yale's tenured professors are women. This signifies a problem and we must hold Yale accountable. The Women's Center sees the tenure fight as just one aspect of the long battle for equality and true co-education."

Co-coordinator Tassi McKay, TD '00, agreed with Kim. "It is great that women are currently students at Yale, and even that they are TAs and professors, but it is an insult to Yale women that most tenured professors are white males and that women are not represented at all levels of scholarship," she stated.

To address this issue, the Women's Center started and now runs the Tenure Action Committee, which also includes members from other organizations. "The Tenure Action Committee holds meetings to discuss the role of female faculty members," co-coordinator Vanessa Agard-Jones, CC '00, said. "We are not asking the University to allow us to make the decisions concerning tenure, but rather to permit us to have a voice and an open communication about policies." The Tenure Action Committee is presently planning on meeting with the faculty of the women's studies department for feedback and advice.

Before this year, the Women's Center rarely took strong stands on political issues, in an effort to avoid stereotyping the Center as "a marginal and radical group for ultra-liberal feminists," Kim explained.

In the past few years, the center coordinators have made strong efforts to attract students who might ordinarily be deterred by this stereotype by hosting diverse events, including coffee and movie nights, Yale bands, happy hours, and even art exhibits. On Fri., Nov. 7, the center sponsored the Sisters Jam, a performance by a variety of a capella groups in order to raise money for charity.

Currently, however, the center is expanding its events to cover more controversial topics. For example, it is displaying the photographs taken by Jane Chen of the 1996 labor strike in New Haven.

Kim acknowledged the difficulty in balancing the Center's roles. "While focusing on this one topic certainly may pose a risk to the normal events and functions that we organize, we believe that now is the time to address and reform Yale's tenure policies," she explained.

The coordinators still remain committed to the non-political activities of the organization. According to Deborah Schmuhl, TD '00, public relations and staffing coordinator, "the Women's Center is a place where Yale students of every political orientation can join together in support of social activism and service to the community. Above all, involvement with the center is a means of building community at school." To provide this service, the Women's Center is funded in part by the University and staffed by student volunteers. The group runs residence programs, including Women and Youths in Support of Education (WISE), and provides clinic escorts for women; health, support, and advocacy groups; and mentoring for eighth-grade girls. This latter project involves workshops in self-confidence, AIDS and sexual education, and focuses on what it means to be a young woman in the inner city.

"The Center provides a forum for people interested in speaking about women, race, and gender-related issues," former coordinator Elisabeth Jacobs, CC '99, said. Christina Bost, MC '01, agreed. "It is important to me to know that I can become involved with an organization that looks out for the social welfare of women on campus."

Jacobs expressed optimism about the center's future. "While the administration has questioned the presence of the Women's Center, with the support of Dean Trachtenberg, our faculty adviser, we now see Yale exhibiting a tolerant and even encouraging approach."

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