What Women Want

The fact that only five students showed up for Monday’s vote on possible plans for a women’s center speaks volumes about the proposed center’s biggest flaw: its narrow constituency. Though supporters of the center have noble intentions, all of its expected functions would be better fulfilled by general purpose space that serves a larger and broader swath of students.

Proponents of a women’s center point out three practical advantages. First, the center will centralize resources that are currently spread across campus and admittedly are quite difficult to find. It will be a central location to find brochures and contact information for health resources or perhaps even house these organizations itself, offering students the convenience and simplicity of one-stop shopping. It would serve a similar purpose for career opportunities for women. Following this plan, the women’s center would be an umbrella organization in the mold of the Phillip Brooks House Association and the Harvard Foundation.

Moving these organizations to the women’s center would, however, discourage men from using them. Although perhaps not as affected by programs that address eating disorders and sexual assault, men deserve to benefit from the health and wellness resources that Harvard has to offer, and men may not feel comfortable going to the women’s center to get help. On the other hand, leaving existing health resources where they are while creating separate but similarly focused ones in the women’s center is inefficient, and the current plan of simply providing information about these resources without actually centralizing them is only a superficial solution. If the University is committed to centralizing these resources, which it should be, it must do so in a space that serves all students.

The second goal of the proposed Women’s Center is to provide space for student groups, particularly those that primarily serve women. With most student groups, including those with offices in the basement of Yard dorms, moving to Hilles Library in the Quad this fall, the demand for meeting space near the Yard will be higher than ever. Having some space in the Yard for these student groups seems like the most worthwhile aim of the project. Indeed, over 60 percent of the students who filled out the Undergraduate Council’s (UC) online survey about the women’s center indicated that they would be most likely to use it to attend a group’s meeting.

Such meeting space would, however, be even more worthwhile if all groups were allowed to use it. Although the women’s center will most likely have a non-discriminatory policy on which groups are allowed to use the space, preference will certainly be given to groups dealing with women’s issues. Harvard boasts hundreds of student groups, 26 of which are specifically with women’s initiatives according to the College’s website. There is no reason to arbitrarily give these groups a better meeting location while relegating other groups—many of which serve far more students—to more inconvenient spaces. Claiming that these groups serve half of the community is a fallacy, as not all women are interested in participating in women-focused activities. If Harvard is interested in providing space to student groups in the most efficient way possible, the basement space should be used as a general purpose space for all student groups.

Proponents of the women’s center also hope that it will generate much-needed social space, perhaps offering free coffee and space to chat and hang out. Some have even been so optimistic as to believe that the women’s center will counter the apparent problems caused by the discrimination and so-called misogynistic atmosphere of all-male final clubs. While the center might provide an alternative option for women on Friday night—although something tells us that women will still be lured by final clubs regardless of the existence of a women’s center in a Yard basement—alienating men while isolating women is no way to resolve any gender inequalities on campus. Integrating men and women and facilitating their cooperation is a better option, which again leads to the conclusion that the Yard basements should be general purpose space.

It is difficult to assess just how useful the women’s center will be to the student body. Only 219 students responded to the UC survey, and some of those who did respond were adamantly opposed to it, ourselves included. With such a small constituency, it is hard to understand why the space—be it social, for student groups, or for centralizing resources—should be devoted to women’s focused activities and not the student body at large.

The ideal solution would be a fully functional student center, an option that is currently and unfortunately unfeasible due to space constraints. Though nothing should be considered a substitute for an eventual student center, the newly-renovated Yard basements are as close as we are going to get for now, and so they should contain space that would serve as much of the student body as possible.

Kathryn E. Patrick ’09, a Crimson editorial editor, lives in Hollis Hall. Meghan E. Grizzle ’07 is a linguistics concentrator in Leverett House. They are the president and creator, respectively, of Students for Equal Student Space.