Building a Women's Center Brick By Brick

Plans for a full-fledged women's center at Harvard remain sketchy at best. Dean Bovet says that such an endeavor would involve "enormous funding and planning" but that she can "envision it happening in the future."

Shinagel interprets widespread support for the Lyman Common Room as an indication of the need for a women's center. "Lyman is not in competition with a future women's center," Shinagel explains. "Even if a sugar mommy gave us a building to use for the center, both places could function."

Frustration with Harvard's slow response to demands for a women's center, as well as with the confusion surrounding the Lyman Common Room, has led students to form the Women's Center. Resource Group (WCRG). "A women's center has been a hazy longterm possibility for too long," WCRG member Naomi Hamburg says. "Action has to be taken now. We can't sit around and expect a center to just appear in five years."

WCRG has recently applied for official recognition from the Committee on College Life. Through alumni support, fund raising and grants from the Undergraduate and Graduate Student Councils, WCRG is planning a number of awareness raising events throughout the year. Events include a Violence Against Women Symposium, a spring rally and a seminar addressing racism in the women's movement.

Last September, WCRG members presented a memo to President Wilson asking Radcliffe not to define the Lyman Common Room as a response to the proposal of last spring. The memo also expresses the inappropriateness of Radcliffe taking the full lead in the establishment of a women's center.

"Harvard gets all but five dollars of the tuition from women students," WCRG member Jill Casid says. "Radcliffe is not equipped to shoulder the full burden of creating a women's center. Harvard has got to take at least 75% of the (financial) responsibility."

In addition, the memo outlines four measures to be addressed by Radcliffe this semester which would constitute concrete measures toward the eventual realization of a women's center. These include: a letter to Harvard administrators requesting that women's center programming funds become a permanent part of the University's budget, the placement of the women's center cause on fundraising lists, the establishment of a task force composed of administrators and faculty to draw up actual plans for the center and a letter co-signed by Wilson urging faculty support for a center.

"So far we haven't received any response to out memo," Casid says. "We do not mean to sound ungrateful for the Lyman Common Room by saying that it is an inadequate response to the demand for a Women's Center. The issue is not one of larger or more luxurious facilities."

Women's Center advocates are careful to emphasize that although the Lyman Common room does not fill the need for a Women's Center, Lyman is an integral part of the Radcliffe Community. "Our differences lie in the realm of meaning and mission," Casid says. "We believe that a women's center should have as its basis the empowerment of women and must, therefore, be organized by a collective of those women. We need Harvard to realize that Lyman Common Room is not a women's center and to take the steps necessary to establish one."

Harvard Is the Exception, Not The Rule

Harvard is the only Ivy League university without a women's center. Stellar examples at other colleges include the Sarah Doyle Women's Center at Brown, the Yale Women's Center and The Women's Center at Princeton. Other excellent prototypes can be found even closer to home.

Going on its fifteenth year, the Tufts University Women's Center has earned the respect of the school through its activist stance on feminist issues. The Center, funded by Tufts and the Student Center, is staffed by students and is open all day. It includes a living room area and office space.

"We work on making the center accessible to women of all sexual orientations and races," Women's Programs Coordinator Peggy Barrett says. "As a collective we are seen as quite a powerful group on campus."

Men at Tufts find that the women's center is not always as inclusive as it could be. "The Women's Center is plagued like other groups on campus. What they do in their own community is great stuff but I think there is an inability to interact with most of the student body," says Nick Karno, a Tufts junior.