Isolating the Cause

Thirteen campus groups, including Radcliffe Union of Students (RUS), the Office of Sexual Assault Prevention and Response, Athena Theatre Company and others, recently lobbied the Undergraduate Council for support to establish a Women’s Center at Harvard. The proposal, which has been front and center in a number of campus groups’ activism, would set aside two rooms in Hilles Library after its impending renovation. But while the proposed women’s center addresses some very valid concerns of Harvard women, it does so in only the most cosmetic way. We agree with many of the broader goals underlying the proposal, but we believe the Center’s proponents would be better off advocating for them in other ways. The council majority was wrong to give the Women’s Center its support.

Chief among the proponent’s claims is that establishing a Women’s Center would signal Harvard’s strong commitment to gender equality and the value of women in this institution. But we fail to see how relegating women’s resources to an outpost in the Quad fosters equality of any kind. As a symbolic act, this Women’s Center proposal is a farce.

The proposal’s insistence on a separate space “to mark the living legacy of women” underscores precisely why this Women’s Center proposal is so pernicious. Rather than commemorate the school’s women and celebrate their achievements merely in two rooms at Hilles, women’s history should be a part of a common Harvard experience for everyone. These groups could advocate, for example, that women be honored and memorialized campus-wide, right alongside “the celebrated history of men’s work at Harvard—portraits, statues, names of buildings and other iconography” vilified in its proposal. Why instead do the Center’s proponents want women to be separate, so that they can be equal?

To be sure, we believe the Center’s proponents may be right to call on Harvard to take more meaningful steps in demonstrating its commitment to women. But these groups could instead argue for more tenured female professors and for improving existing services for more female undergraduates campus-wide. Such measures are consistent with broader goals of women’s equality—broader goals deserving of support.

But establishing a Women’s Center in this way would undermine the very “tenets of equality of access and opportunity” proponents of the proposal purport to advocate. Although the Center would welcome men and women, its exclusive emphasis on “the well-being of female students at Harvard” in effect singles out women for unwarranted institutional support.

Proponents also argue that a Women’s Center is necessary so that disparate groups can have a shared meeting space and resource center. And while these claims may have merit, many other coalitions of groups on campus might benefit from a similar arrangement. It is disappointing that RUS and other Women’s Center supporters have chosen to politicize their demands for rooms of their own, on a campus where student space is at a premium. RUS put up a red protest tent on the Science Center lawn in April—eschewing the College’s proper, customary procedures to apply for student space in favor of a public, activist campaign. Such tactics beg College administrators to prioritize women’s space over other groups’ requests, and thus the Women’s Center threatens to be—in the words of dissenting Council representative Joseph K. Oliveri ’05—“divisive and discriminatory.”

The rationale for a Women’s Center perpetuates exactly those stereotypes women’s groups should be fighting: that women inherently need relatively more encouragement and resources from Harvard in order to feel welcome and to succeed here. The Women’s Center, according to the proposal, would consist of “a large meeting room and resource center;” however, there is no comparable space devoted to men and issues of men’s concern anywhere on campus.

Harvard certainly owes its women a strong institutional commitment to gender equality, but the Women’s Center as a mere token gesture hardly constitutes this kind of commitment. While proponents’ goals merit support, the Women’s Center does not.