There is not an invisible force-field ostracizing penises from the Women’s Center. Contrary to some students’ beliefs, it is not a space solely for women and men are allowed and encouraged to visit. The Women’s Center, located in the basement of Smith and Burdick has been a part of the Conn College community for just over 25 years and has grown in the 2014-2015 school year.
A primary change that has been applied in the Women’s Center this year is the new staffing structure. “Throughout this new academic year, we have been trying to implement a new structure – one that’s actually kind of not a structure,” Center coordinator Joey Mercado ’16 said. “It’s non-hierarchical; it’s horizontal, [meaning] everyone is on the same level. The only differences between the positions are that the coordinators meet with our advisor, and we look into the future of the space and how to keep the program going. The managers are the ones who really do most of the work in the space.” While the center’s coordinators work with the advisor on more behind-the-scenes planning, the managers are the staff members who work on day-to-day things like keeping the space clean for visitors and hosting events.
This year the center has also started keeping better tabs on the center’s archives and the development of the center since its opening. “When the center first started, one thing I noticed, [while] looking through the archives was that they focused a lot more on sexual assault prevention,” Center manager Hannah Johnston ’18 said. “Now that Darcie [Folsom] is here, the center has moved away from that and more towards gender roles and basically everything else related to women’s rights.”
Coordinator Alexis Adams-Clark ’15 added, “It also reflects the changing ideas within contemporary feminism. If you looked back in the late 80s, it was more white women’s concerns, but as it’s been developing, the women’s center’s current agenda has been developing in terms of intersectionality and making connections with all of the different centers on campus.”
The Women’s Center helps to connect with the rest of the campus through the other centers along with the events that managers and coordinators host. The “Welcome Back” event, for example, at the start of the spring semester was a milkshake night, which attracted dozens of students to come together in the space to hang out. “This year we’ve improved the women’s center; we’ve definitely moved things around and added a few things to make it more homey. I really think we’ve improved on that,” Center manager Carolina Diez ’17 said. “You don’t have to come here to have a discussion. You can come to hang out, do your homework, hang out with friends, or have a game night. I think that’s an important aspect of the center; it’s not just here for one purpose.”
The center makes changes every year, including the physical makeup of the space and how the center is structurally run with its staff and events. “I mean, I’m a freshman, but from what I can tell, we’ve really evolved the center a lot this year and gotten a lot more people into the space. I think more people should come here because it’s really nice,” Johnson said. Because of a grant from alum Susan Rose, the center has been able to hire a larger staff in order to stay open more throughout the week. “[Rose] has donated for the past two years. But before that we could pay four people to work here, and the rest were volunteers. And now [because of the grant], we pay ten, so that went a long way to actually keeping the space open and having people engaged,” Adams-Clark said.
Due to the increase in needed staff members, however, the center is still left with a limited budget for events. “The budget that we work off of is small in contrast to that,” Mercado said. “Aside from the money that she gives us for our workers, we have a very small budget that we have to proportion for the entire year.”
On discussing where the money goes, Diez explained that, “The money that we get we use for various things, mostly to keep the space open to get people in here, whether it’s to do homework, to have events, literally anything. Then again some of the money also goes to events.”
Events that the center holds include television and film viewings, trivia nights, and discussions. Discussions are held as a way to inform students as well as a way for them to share their thoughts and feelings about current events. The most recent discussion was “Slacktivism vs. Activism” which allowed for students to express their ideas in an open discussion on the topic with other students along with Professor of Government and International Relations Tristan Borer in an engaging environment. •
