As a group of students who cherish the Women’s Center and its role on campus, we are deeply concerned about the confusion and misinformation created by the administration’s handling of the decision to move the Center to East Campus. We would like to explain recent events from the student perspective and reiterate that the move to East Campus would significantly damage efforts for gender equity among students at Duke for years to come.
In late February, the administration decided that the Women’s Center would move to the basement of the Crowell Building on East Campus in the Fall of 2016. In an email to the student body on March 2, Vice President of Student Affairs Dr. Larry Moneta subtly alluded to the Women’s Center decision when he said “changes will require the relocation of the Center for Leadership Development and Social Action and the Office of Fraternity and Sorority Life, as well as other campus units.”
On March 7, a group of Women’s Center interns met with Moneta to discuss the move in an effort to understand how and why the decision was made. The meeting concluded with no clear commitments made and no responsibility accepted, with all responsibility deflected to the Center’s staff.
In a set of emails to Dr. Moneta on April 5 and 8 following on the meeting, students shared detailed concerns about moving the space, proposals for potential solutions to the move, and calls for future action, requesting a response by the next day. They sent the second email attaching over 200 responses received from a survey submitted to the student body, which has grown to over 400 since. Over 95 percent of respondents said they would be unhappy if the Center moved to East. The main points of concern for the new location included decreased visibility and effectiveness of the Center’s programming, logistical and symbolic displacement of the Center from a central part of campus, and Student Conduct hearings—including sexual assault cases—being held in the same building as the Center.
On April 18, we, as concerned students, organized a “Show the Love to Stop the Move” event in a spirit of positivity to show student support for the Women’s Center’s incredible work. Over a hundred students turned out to show their love for the Center’s current location in person, over three hundred students demonstrated support on social media, and not a single staff member was present, while the administration attempted to lock us out.
The staff of the Center requested we move the event time so as to not interfere with counseling appointments; we complied without question. When we arrived at the Center at 4:30, all staff had left and a plainclothes police officer arrived, telling students that the Center was supposed to have been closed at 3:30 rather than 5. He left without further explanation.
Dr. Airall and Dean Sue Wasiolek then arrived and demanded that the students inside immediately leave with their belongings, initially refusing to give a real reason. Airall then said the Center must close “because [she] said so.” She eventually revealed that a single specific tweet with the phrase “packing the Women’s Center,” sent from the personal account of a student had ignited their concern. The administration projected their own assumptions of disruption to shut the event down.
What this demonstrated to us again was that the administration and staff were not willing to engage with what students had to say, despite the detailed responses outlining specific student-centered rationale against the move, over 900 signatures to an online petition, and over 400 survey responses detailing student’s individual reasons for keeping the Women’s Center on West Campus.
As people of all genders who are friends of the Women’s Center recognizing the importance of having a space created for women and feminine-of-center students on campus, we feel vilified, alienated and abandoned.
We are deeply concerned with the lack of transparency and collaborative engagement with the wider student body about possible concerns for the administration’s and staff’s decision. It is deeply troubling that administrators and staff who are supposed to advocate for students are not willing to listen. We urge the Women’s Center staff and the administration engage with why the move is strongly opposed by a significant number of students.
We hope that others will join us in calling for public commitments to alternatives to the move, following the lead of organizations like Duke Student Government, whether that alternative be the Women’s Center staying on West Campus with a satellite office on East Campus, or the Center moving to the East Campus location with a clear, sincere, and strong commitment that it will be given its own new, free-standing building within the next five years alongside Central Campus renovations.
As we all work towards a larger space for the Women’s Center in the future, we call for progressive - rather than regressive—steps. The Women’s Center is a home for gender equity on this campus, and we urge students to join us in protecting this home.
Katie Becker (T’17)
Sarah Bender (T’16)
Alex Bressler (T’18)
Carlos Barrero Castedo (T’18)
Alexander Deckey (T’18)
Anita Desai (P‘18)
Julia Dunn (T’16)
Danielle Dvir (T’18)
Jared Eng (T’18)
Medha Gudavalli (T’16)
Lisa Guraya (T’18)
Whitney Hazard (T’18)
Andrew Huang (T’17)
Tanner Johnson (T’18)
Louise Kendaru (T’18)
Christine Lee (T’18)
Danica Liu (T’15)
Annie Lo (T’18)
Tanner Lockhead (T’17)
Pooja Mehta (T’17)
Celia Mizelle (T’19)
Alice Reed (T’18)
Virginia Reid (T’19)
Adam Schutzman (T’17)
Conor Smith (T’17)
Kristina Smith (T’ 19)
Tara Smith (T’19)
Thamina Stoll (T’17)
Jay Sullivan (T’16)
Patricia Torvalds (P’19)
Zarah Udwadia (T’17)
Jessica Van Meir (T’17)
Stanley Yuan (P’16)
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