Walking past Kiewit, back to the Green, I passed a friend of mine who greeted me with "Hey, where are you coming from?" Not an abnormal greeting, especially by Dartmouth fast-paced-tunnel-vision-busy-students' standards. I said that I had had a meeting at the "WRC." This friend of mine responded as her eyes turned from wide, eager sensory input devices to miniature slits in confusion. "WRC?!?!"
"Yeah ... Women's Resource Center ... Choates ... Don't tell me you don't know what the WRC is."
"Uhhh ... " as the eyes reopened a little, showing signs of curiosity. This SENIOR, yes, a '97 WOMAN, had no clue as to what or where the Women's Resource Center is. For this, I embarrassed her quite a bit with some remarks about her being at an Ivy League college and how the Admissions Office is supposed to have standards, and all that stuff we arrogant Ivy Leaguers bring out when one of our friends acts like an imbecile. But then I realized this ignorance was not her fault. Sure, she could have sought out counseling services and programming activities had she wanted or needed them. Clearly, she didn't feel the impetus in her three-plus years in Hanover. But it is not as though this woman has been a bookworm, confined to Sanborn twenty-four-seven. She is a member of a very well-regarded a capella group on campus and I've seen her at many campus social functions. So it is not as if this woman has had all points of access to the world cut off for three years and this highly valuable information missed her as did meaningless details such as where the DA$H account balances are posted and everything else.
There was more at work here. This highly-involved senior woman did not know where the WRC was located nor what it did not because she does not have the "academic qualifications" of a "typical" Ivy Leaguer. She didn't know precisely because of where the Women's Center is located.
So, by now you have discovered the purpose of this column. If you haven't caught it yet, here's the gist. The WRC stands for the Women's Resource Center. It's located waaaay out there in this tiny office in the Choates. Yes, the Choates is that cluster that we all place right before the River Cluster with a number nine or ten or whatever is second-to-last on our housing applications. My point is that this is rather ridiculous. An office that has so much potential at an institution which has forever been labeled as "male-dominated" is suffering and struggling to even be acknowledged because it resides somewhere that nobody goes, nobody wants to go, and nobody even hears about.
You know what's even worse than being in the Choates and having a senior woman not even know what you do? The answer is being in the Choates and doing lots of positive programming for the entire campus, providing lots of counseling services to the entire community, and representing a place of refuge for a large portion of the community and then having a senior woman not even know about it.
Every year we hear about sexual assaults and the College's efforts to eliminate them. The bottom line is that they haven't been and probably cannot be completely eliminated. But what do we do when they do indeed happen? How do we help those people, men and women, who are affected by them? How do we help those people, men and women, who are affected by other issues of gender? Since those involved in these questions are essentially the entire campus, I would suspect that this is a rather crucial issue to address. But have we with the WRC? The actual Center, yes, does address these issues. But has the College done its part by placing it and keeping it in such a location?
Parkhurst's response to this debacle of a situation, you ask? Well, the WRC has been at a "temporary location" since its inception nine years ago. For some reason, nine years just doesn't seem temporary to me. For years, the WRC has been working hard for an identity on campus and in the community, with hard workers plugging away inside that tiny office, promised a new, better location. For nine years, the WRC has been waiting for that new, better location. For nine years, the WRC relocation has been put off. My question is, how much longer can we afford to leave this at the bottom of the priority list?
