Does Harvard Need a Women's Center?

With Radcliffe College on the way out and after two well-publicized campus rape cases in the last 18 months, a group of undergraduate women have begun asking Harvard to reassess a woman's place on campus.

These women, led by the Coalition Against Sexual Violence, have demanded better medical services for rape victims, more administrative attention to women's educational issues and more opportunities to foster community among Harvard women.

In particular, they have requested a roof of their own to go over offices and meeting space--a "women's center" like the ones found on all other Ivy campuses and at colleges across the country.

But problems with this plan arise from all sides. First, Harvard already has resources for women that are comparable to those of other universities--they are just not all found in one building.

Second, the administration has never been fond of creating "centers" for specific ethnic or gender groups. And in agreement with the College's identity-groups philosophy, many female students say they would not be comfortable being singled out in this way as a sub-community with special needs.

And so, though the coalition has already won some concessions on other fronts and will likely win more, a women's center as they envision it will certainly not be coming to Harvard in the near future.

Other Schools of Thought

This preliminary discussion leads coalition leaders to other schools for models of women's centers. The functions and resources of these centers are surprisingly similar across the country.

These centers boast substantial medical, educational and social programming and hired staff, in addition to part-time student workers.

An ideal women's center, coalition members say, is exemplified by the center at Duke University.

Founded in 1989 by a group of undergraduate women with concerns similar to the coalition's, the Duke center has its own building and a small full-time staff, in addition to part-time student workers.

On the personal health and safety front, the Duke Women's Center also houses the Office of Sexual Assault Support Services (SASS). SASS provides a full array of educational programs and support.

In addition, Duke's center has a program called Safe Haven. Open on the weekends, Safe Haven provides a place for women to "sober up in safety," wait inside for transportation and sleep over in times of crisis.

With seven staff members and a building of its own, the Stanford University Women's Center seeks "to improve women's lives on all levels and to enable women to achieve their fullest personal and educational potential." It, too, has been cited as a model by coalition members.

Though the Stanford center has no in-house clinic, its staff directs women to medical resources and are trained to respond in cases of sexual assault.

As for educational services, Duke's women's center hosts book and film discussions, sessions on car repair and career workshops, among other programs. The center also invites women scholars and politicians to speak and lead discussions on issues facing women.

At Stanford, the center provides a broad array of intellectual programs such as roundtable discussions, brown bag lunches with professors, and lectures.

Every year, the center runs a three-week-long celebration of women called "Herstory" where famous women are invited to speak, film festivals are held and female artists can exhibit their works.

Both Duke and Stanford, as well as other Ivy schools, provide space for womens' student groups to meet in their women's center. Other space is simply left open for socializing, studying and hanging out.

Harvard's Resources

But, though its services are not centralized in one building, Harvard's offerings for female undergraduates are often comparable to those at other schools.

Some educational services specific to women are provided by the Bureau of Study Counsel. These services include workshops on speaking up more in class and on dealing with eating disorders.

Some educational programs for women are also run by academic departments, such as Women in Philosophy. Others span disciplines, such as Women in Science at Harvard and Radcliffe (WISHR) and Women in Economics and Government.

Beyond meeting to discuss gender-related problems that women encounter in specific fields, these groups host roundtables and discussions with professors.

On a social level, various ethnic and racial organizations focused on women receive University support. The Association of Black Radcliffe Women (ABRW), Latinas Unidas, the South Asian Women's Collective, and the Hillel Women's Group provide smaller communities for women to discuss academic experiences.

On the medical front, Harvard offers a number of programs aimed at preventing and dealing with sexual assault.

The Rape Aggression Defense (RAD) program is a training program administered by the Harvard University Police Department. It highlights awareness and risk reduction along with basic lessons in hands-on defense training.

The Sexual Assault/Sexual Harassment Advising (SASH) system is a House-based system, with tutors in each of the four Yard divisions and in every upperclass House. These tutors are meant to be individuals students can turn to for basic counseling and direction to medical resources.

In addition, the peer-counseling group Response group deals with rape, date rape, incest, abuse and sexual harassment.

Perhaps the area where Harvard falls most short is in its response to sexual assault. Most other schools to which coalition members point have a clinic actually inside the women's center or elsewhere on campus where rape victims can be treated.

At Harvard, however, University Health Services (UHS) has a policy of sending rape victims to area hospitals whose staffs are trained to deal with them.

For example, the undergraduate who accused D. Drew Douglas, Class of 2000, of rape last year says she was told after arriving at UHS to take a cab to a Boston hospital for treatment.

Harvard officials have explained this deficiency by saying that there are not enough sexual assaults on campus to warrant a staff member specifically trained in rape response.

Harvard does offer psychological counseling for rape victims through UHS' Mental Health Services.

Centralization

Coalition Co-Chairs Alexis B. Karteron '01 and Kaitlin McGaw '00 say that, despite the services that Harvard already provides, centralizing information and resources in one building would provide a number of intangible benefits.

So while their proposal for a women's center is not yet final, they say the most important quality of any plan must be its centralizing quality.

"People don't know where to go" Karteron says. "[Women] feel like they're going at it alone."

"The sum of the parts isn't the same as the whole," she adds.

A full-time administrator should staff the center, the co-chairs say. The administrator would be able to point women in the direction of Harvard's specialized resources.

The center would be "a logical space for people to turn to," Karteron says.

But this is the point at which exactly what the coalition wants becomes murky. The College has suggested a program on the model of the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations, where a women's group could have an administrator but no space larger than an office.

But the coalition has rejected this proposal.

"It's not enough to have simply an administrator," Karteron says. "A celebration [like Cultural Rhythms] is not enough."

"Harvard is a men's club," Karteron says. "Women need, are entitled to, a separate space."

But, the coalition members say, space alone, like that provided by Radcliffe's Lyman Common Room (LCR), won't cut it either. Karteron says the LCR lacks "administrative support."

McGaw adds, "It's just a room you're allowed to use."

Distance from Harvard's central campus and minimal publicity keeps the LCR at the margins of most female undergraduates' lives. This, coalition members say, precludes nighttime visits and spontaneous "hanging-out."

Many senior women say that in their four years here they have never set foot in the LCR and that it does not count as a women's space.

A Matter of Principle

But another powerful obstacle to any building that would combine space and an administrator just for women is the College's strict policy against creating special domains for a specific student ethnic or gender group.

"I think that it's best not to set up different spaces for people, but to respond programmatically [instead]," Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III says, "because women are full and equal members of Harvard College."

And several female undergraduates say they agree. Daphne D. Adler '99 says she has never felt the need for resources targeted specifically at women. In fact, these types of resources, she says, may actually lend support to conceptions of gender inequality.

"Giving women additional services implies that they need more support" she says.

Samantha J. Riesenfeld '99 also sees a danger in establishing a women's center.

"It makes it seem like women have all these problems," she says.

The coalition says they have already had some success lobbying the College. Some changes will be made to the first-year orientation meeting on safety to better accommodate concerns about sexual violence. SASH advisers will have longer training periods.

And the coalition will likely continue to be a prominent group on campus, But by focusing on demands for a women's center that seem very unlikely to be approved, the coalition may be misdirecting its efforts for the time being.