With the 25th anniversary of coeducation fast approaching, the time is right for theCollege to create a task force to seriously evaluate the status of women on campus.
Women's Resource Center Director Giavanna Munafo approached the administration earlier this term with a plan for a task force, made up of administrators, faculty and students, to examine the "environment for women at Dartmouth."
While the College has made great strides toward reaching gender equity, both administrators and students say there is work to be done in and out of the classroom. They say even though the campus is almost 50 percent female, the social and academic scene is still male-oriented.
Munafo said the task force's activities would tie into a planned celebration of the 25th anniversary of coeducation.
"The products [of the task force] will be the assessment and the celebration, and out of that we hope we will be charting a course for the future of coeducation at Dartmouth," Munafo told The Dartmouth at the beginning of the term.
Former Senior Class President Dan Garodnick '94 last year formed an all-student "Task Force on the Status of Women" that attempted to examine issues effecting women at Dartmouth.
However, the task force never released any conclusive results. David Gonzalez '95, the task force's co-chair, told The Dartmouth that the group realized "what we had proposed was beyond our control."
The complex issues related to women at Dartmouth are too broad to be handled solely by students, who lack the perspective to comprehensively address those topics.
Forming Munafo's task force would allow the College to assess the current state of women and see where the future of coeducation lies.
In interviews for The Dartmouth's series on "Women at Dartmouth," several administrators said the College is close to the "turning point," where it can finally leave behind the checkered history of the early days of coeducation.
But before the College turns the corner, there are many issues that need to be addressed, and forming Munafo's task force would be a good start.
