On Saturday, 100 students gathered on Collis Patio to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the Center for Gender and Student Engagement with refreshments, giveaways and history supplemented with original photos and articles from the creation of the center.
A discussion covered campus culture and sexual violence prevention and asked for student feedback on the topics, and Sophia Pedlow '15 and Murylo Batista '15 talked with others about their experiences at the center and its programs.
The celebration will continue throughout the year with the Men's Project White Ribbon Campaign and the Women's Leadership Council, which will make special reference to the 25th anniversary, the center's assistant director Michelle Hector said.
Former director Giavanna Munafo, said she most enjoyed seeing new students discover the center.
"The program here at Dartmouth means a great deal to me," Munafo said. "It means that our community has a place where the focus is on women's and men's experiences as women and men, a resource for support, encouragement and advocacy and a hub for all sorts of programming partnerships and activities."
Mary Childers, the center's director from 1991 to 1993, said the number of female faculty members and administrators has increased substantially since she left the College.
During her time as director, students affiliated with the center were interested in issues of gender, race, sexual violence and identity, Childers said.
"A number of women students tried to work on coalitions between women of color and Caucasian women and on alternative social lives that did not involve drunken hookups," she said. "Services for LGBTQ students were very limited on campus, so the center was also a haven for both male and female students who were gay, lesbian, queer, bisexual and searching."
Past and present directors said the many changes to the center's name over the past 25 years reflect the evolution of its mission and programs.
Founded as the Women's Resource Center in 1988, it later became known as the Center for Women and Gender and was renamed as the Center for Gender and Student Engagement last academic year. The center became independent of the Office of Pluralism and Leadership last winter, OPAL director Alysson Satterlund said.
"I can say, in short, that Dartmouth admitted women into a campus culture that was often hostile and unsafe for women, not all women, but too many," Munafo said. "The WRC was created to ensure that the institution took responsibility for acknowledging and addressing that reality, not single-handedly, but as a leader in partnerships across campus."
Munafo said her ideas about the goals of a "women's center" have changed as students called her attention to sexism, sexual assault and homophobia.
"None of our work at the center could be effective if it looked only at women' or only at gender' to understand causes or imagine responses to problems," she said. "At the time, women's studies programs were making similar changes and many women's centers were recognizing the need to be clear in our names and our work that sex and gender are important parts of everyone's lives and identities."
A recent focus of the CGSE is to broaden the diversity of gender discussions at Dartmouth. One example is the Men's Project program, which began at the College in 2001 and has continued to grow and evolve since, director Kyle Ashlee said.
"The Men's Project program seeks to bring together resources to help male identified students at Dartmouth analyze traditional notions of the masculine gender role, examine their own understanding of masculinity, as well as explore the various intersecting identities within the male community," Ashlee said. "Additionally, the Men's Project works closely with Men's Forum on campus to provide a safe space for men to explore and better understand their experiences as men at Dartmouth."
Recently, the center's biggest challenge has been communicating its changes in philosophy to campus.
"It is clear that our students identify their gender in many different ways across a spectrum," Ashlee said.
The center currently organizes programs and events for students, faculty and staff that facilitate discussions about women's issues and gender implications. Their services include individual advising, support for student organizations and campus-wide events such as V-Week and advising the gender neutral floor program.
"Our programs and events strive to support students and provide opportunities to explore gender and identity," Hector said."We look forward to providing a breadth of these events and initiatives to the Dartmouth campus in the coming year, including Ally Development Training Program, and Afternoon Tea at the CGSE."
