Women's Resource Center Director Giavanna Munafo recently approached the College with a proposal to create a panel to evaluate the progress of women at Dartmouth in the 23 years since coeducation.
Munafo, who collaborated with students and College staff on the idea, submitted a formal proposal to Provost Lee Bollinger in a meeting last Wednesday.
"The goals of the task force are to assess the status of an environment for women at Dartmouth and to plan for and coordinate the anniversary of coeducation at Dartmouth," Munafo said.
If approved, Munafo said she hopes the task force will begin meeting by the end of the month.
She said the task force's activities would tie in to a planned
celebration commemorating the 25th anniversary of coeducation at Dartmouth, tentatively planned for the spring of 1997.
"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 said.
Munafo said she hopes the celebration will include educational and cultural programs for the College community.
"I'd like to keep the celebration as organic to the history of coeducation as possible," Munafo said. "By this I mean that we would like our ideas to come out of the experiences men and women have had with coeducation at Dartmouth."
Munafo said she hopes the task force will begin planning the coeducation celebration this spring and will start the assessment in the fall.
The development of this new task force was one of the final recommendations of last year's student-run Task Force on the Status of Women at Dartmouth.
The Task Force on the Status of Women at Dartmouth, "didn't work out as well as people had hoped," said Yun Chung '97, a member of the old task force.
Chung said part of the reason last year's task force was unsuccessful was that the members needed more time and human resources to effectively evaluate the issue.
In addition, Chung said the students felt a collaboration of students, administrators and faculty would be necessary to adequately deal with the topic.
"One of the questions we are looking to answer is 'Has Dartmouth really succeeded in its mission to be a truly coeducational liberal arts college?'" Chung said.
Munafo said she hopes the task force will be comprised of a diverse group of men and women from all realms of the College.
Bollinger could not be reached for comment.
