Women's Group Calls For Resource Center

The Radcliffe Union of Students (RUS) called for the conversion of part of Hilles Library into an on-campus women’s center at a meeting last night.

RUS Co-Chair Carolyn D. Amole ’07 said Harvard is the only Ivy League school that does not have student space specifically dedicated to women.

“It would be a very positive change.” said RUS Activism Chair Amanda W. Martin ’06. “People are sick of hearing that Harvard is sexist and has so many male-dominated spaces.”

RUS members said a women’s center would include office space for women’s groups on campus, event space that could be rented out and a centralized place to access information about resources for female undergraduates on campus.

“We need a middle ground for women who don’t have specific preferences” for particular women’s groups, Martin said. “Right now, women’s resources are incredibly scattered, but with a resource center you could go in looking for one thing and end up learning about a bunch of things.”

RUS Co-Chair Ilana J. Sichel ’05 said that upcoming renovations of Hilles marks the first opportunity for the College to allocate space for a women’s center.

To begin mobilizing support for the women’s center, RUS plans to appeal to other women’s groups on campus such as the Association of Black Harvard Women, the Coalition Against Sexual Violence and Women in Business.

Eventually, RUS hopes to create a coalition of representatives of different groups on campus—both gender- and non-gender-focused—to work on the creation of a women’s center.

“We’re looking for something that isn’t just glorified office space,” Marcel A. Q. Laflamme ’04-’05 said.

RUS is also considering starting a petition, and distributing materials promoting a women’s center during pre-frosh weekend to create awareness among students and the administration.

According to Amole, Harvard has rejected proposals for a women’s center in the past because it violates anti-discrimination clauses.

Women’s groups have asked sporadically for the creation of a center over the last several years.Amole said that the proposed center would not discriminate against men.

“People of all genders would be welcome,” she said.

Several RUS members said they worried that a potential location in Hilles would be too far from the center of campus to be widely used.

“I would be afraid that the women’s center would not be utilized [in Hilles],” Sarah E. Tavel ’04 said. “It would be a token.”

Other members said they were confident it would be used if the center was a place that groups could reserve for meetings or events.

Harvard also lacks a student center or a center for students of color—a counterproposal Amole said RUS encountered during its workshop at last weekend’s Harvard Social Forum.

In response, Amole suggested creating a student center that had areas geared toward specific groups within it.

—Staff writer Monica M. Clark can be reached at mclark@fas.harvard.edu.