Report: College Women Need More Support

The first-ever Report on Undergraduate Women’s Initiatives at Harvard made a quiet debut last week at the first-year activities fair. The 24-page report—the first-ever compilation of campus women’s group offerings—calls for greater support for women undergraduates and a more central role for the Ann Radcliffe Trust, which funds projects related to women’s issues.

“The women’s community at Harvard needs greater support,” the conclusion reads. “The Harvard-Radcliffe merger removed Radcliffe as the wheel’s center, without replacing it with a corresponding centralizing force…the Trust can help groups break out of the reinventing cycle.”

The report, produced by student group Women’s Initiative Network (WIN), outlines the history and mission of 10 officially recognized women’s groups along with contact information. It also gives voice to three “hot topics” in women’s issues on campus: establishing a women’s center, ensuring harsher penalties for sexual assault and increasing the number of tenured female Faculty.

Former WIN chair Victoria L. Steinberg ’01, who along with co-chair Shauna L. Shames ’01 came up with the idea last fall, said the report is intended to document women’s efforts on campus as well as to reach out to students, parents and—perhaps most importantly—administrators.

“Issues like the women’s center…have largely been discussed behind closed doors,” Steinberg said. “My hope is that this report will expose those issues to a wider audience and to the audience who needs to know this, especially administrators.”

Several leaders of women’s groups lauded the report as “long overdue” and “a step in the right direction.” The upcoming Women’s Guide to Harvard, patterned after The Unofficial Guide to Life at Harvard but focused on women’s issues, will offer similar resources later this year.

“I wish I had had something like this as a freshman,” said Chanda Prescod-Weinstein ’03, co-chair of sexual orientation group Girlspot. She said the compilation will be especially useful to first-year females choosing among groups.

Others said they appreciated the effort to record groups’ histories, a feat which they hoped would ease leadership transitions and the building of alumnae networks.

But a few group leaders—including Prescod-Weinstein and Kimberly H. Levy ’03 of the Association of Black Harvard Women—also questioned the real impact of the report.

“I think that the administration is very well aware of what the demands listed in the report are,” Prescod-Weinstein said. “[Women] been very vocal about it but the adminstration has also been very good at ignoring what it doesn’t want to hear or doesn’t want to deal with.”

“The blurbs are so terse and laconic that they don’t really provide administrators with information that they don’t already know,” Levy said.

Issues that were brought up in the report have been articulated time and again by student groups, raising the issue of whether the report actually says anything that administrators don’t already know.

When asked by The Crimson whether he learned anything from the report, Dean of the College Harry R. Lewis ’68 said in an e-mail, “I thought that the best part was the compendium of descriptions and contact information for women’s groups, which is what constitutes most of the brochure.”

Some women’s group leaders even contested the report’s conclusions, including the one suggesting that the Ann Radcliffe Trust step up its role. This comes at the same time that the Trust has been working overtime to increase its visibility, particularly among first-years.

“If Radcliffe is no longer existing, something really truly needs to replace it,” Prescod-Weinstein said. “The Trust does not replace Radcliffe. The Institute does not replace what Radcliffe was.”

And whether the report accurately reflects campus women’s groups and their concerns is also uncertain. Because the report was published through the Dean’s Office, women’s groups that are not officially recognized by the College are not mentioned, even in passing, in the report. These include groups like the Seneca and the Bee as well as sororities like Delta Gamma.

“I understand why they didn’t include the social groups…but coming into Harvard most freshmen know about the final clubs for men on campus, but I don’t think they’ve heard much about what there is for women,” said M. Kate Richey ’03, president of Delta Gamma.

“Social groups are an important sector to look at when looking at all of the opportunities for women on campus,” she added.

The report’s limited distribution has also drawn fire from students. Students can only get the report at the Trust’s table at the activities fair.

“There’s no sense in having a report if it’s not disseminated,” said Levy, chair of the Association of Black Harvard Women. “Even I don’t know how I can get access to a report like this and I’m a women’s group leader.”

Associate Dean of the College Karen E. Avery ’87, director of the Trust, which funded the report, said it was not originally intended to be circulated widely, instead only going to certain administrators and interested students. Last Thursday, most of the 3,000 copies published were still sitting in boxes in Avery’s office.

But Avery noted that the report may be distributed to more students. Depending on interest, the report may be placed online, dropped off at dining halls and door-dropped to suites. Still, these are only tentative plans, she said.

Avery and Steinberg acknowledge that there is room for improvement in the future—the report may be updated and republished in a year or two.

“We are hoping that with annual revisions it will widen its scope, especially to include more issues that women on campus deal with on a regular basis,” Steinberg said.

—Staff Writer Juliet J. Chung can be reached at jchung@fas.harvard.edu.