Kidd Presents Women's Center Plans

Associate Dean of the College Judith H. Kidd unveiled four possible layout schemes for the College’s planned women’s center to members of women’s groups yesterday evening.

About five students showed up in Loker Commons yesterday to vote on

the four designs and discuss their visions of the center with the dean.

The plans, which were designed by the same architecture firm overseeing the renovation of the Quad Library, portrayed different configurations of Canaday Hall’s basement, where the center will be located.

The scheme that received the most votes will be sent back to the architects for further development, Kidd said.

Kidd emphasized that she wanted to get a “young student perspective” versus an architectural perspective—or her own.

“If the students say that they want ‘drop-in,’ well, what does ‘drop-in’ look like?” she said. “I think knowing that is the most important thing.”

The schemes indicate that the women’s center will be comprised of office space—including a director’s office, conference room, and staff offices—and communal space, including a reception lounge, computer stations, a TV lounge, and a kitchen.

“For the very limited space that there is, [the women’s center] has all the elements needed,” said Yui Hirohashi ’06, a member of the committee currently searching for the center’s director. “It has a place where students can hang out, a place where productive things can happen, and a place for communication.”

Giselle B. Schuetz ’06, also a committee member and former co-chair of Radcliffe Union of Students, also suggested that the center should draw people in.

“A lot of people might just come, check e-mail, and then leave­­­—we don’t want that,” she said.

The presentation of these schemes follows a prior meeting two weeks ago between Kidd and women’s group representatives in which the necessary elements of a women’s center were discussed.

But aside from an online survey conducted last month by the Undergraduate Council (UC), the general student body will not have input on the design of the women’s center, according to Kidd.

“I don’t think that there’s ever a process where the entire community is involved. You have to know who the primary users are going to be,” she said. “Also, knowing that the women’s organization’s goals are that the center be welcoming and inclusive, this gives us the groundwork on which we can get good feedback from them.”

Ji Eun Baek ’09, a UC representative from Straus Hall who designed the survey, said that it was the best way of including student opinion on both the physical and abstract aspects of the women’s center.

Baek said that the on-campus controversy regarding the use of student space to construct a women’s center instead of a general student center is unnecessary.

“I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive,” Baek said. “Basically, the administration is supplying a demand that’s been there for the past 35 years. There’s still demand for it, so why not centralize these resources and provide young women—and men—the resources that they’re looking for?”

Kidd said construction of the center will begin after commencement and that the women’s center will be ready to open in the fall.

—Staff writer Elaine Chen can be reached chen23@fas.harvard.edu.