FOCUS: The Year of the Woman

Twenty years ago, when then-University student Maureen Anderson walked down Locust Walk, she would pass fraternity brothers sitting on the roof of their house, rating the women as they walked by. The men said they were judging the women on their smiles, but Anderson and other female students felt they were being judged on the desirability of their bodies. So one day, Anderson decided to put a halt to this. She ran into the nearby Christian Association Building, grabbed a plate of potato salad -- with lots of mayo -- and smeared it all over one of the men. This, relates Carol Tracy, former student activist and former head of the Penn Women's Center, is what things used to be like on the University's campus. Twenty years later, the University is getting ready to celebrate the anniversary of a 200-person protest in College Hall which led to the formation of the Penn Women's Center and the Women's Studies Program, and which community leaders say validated female students' concerns on campus. Tracy -- who herself was one of the protesters -- said the celebration will consist of a kick-off rally at the Button and a panel on women and politics. A speech last week by Sarah Weddington, the prosecutor in the Roe v. Wade trial, is also part of the 20th anniversary celebration. In additon, Tracy said she would like to re-unite the women involved in the sit-in to celebrate the April anniversary. · The history-making protest began on April 4, 1973, when 200 women entered College Hall after a rally on the Green. It ended on April 6, when the University gave in and accepted the demands of the 55 protesters who had remained in the hallway outside then-President Martin Meyerson's office. The student protesters said they were angry about the way women were treated on campus and demanded that the University establish a women's center and form a committee to coordinate the implementation of security measures. As a result of the sit-in, the University hired three new female administrators in December of the same year to find a way to change the University's dealings with women. The sit-in, which received nationwide attention and sympathetic support in the local and national press, was conceived in an "atmosphere of fear, that finally turned to anger," Tracy, a member of the sit-in negotiating team, said last week. "And I was a royal pain in the ass to Meyerson," she added. Carroll Smith-Rosenberg, current director of the Women's Studies Program, also took part in the negotiations as a professor at the University. She recalled last week that there had been no real progress towards women's rights on campus before the demonstration. "It definitely acted as a catalyst," she said. Before the protest, Smith-Rosenberg said, students had heard rumors of rape and harassment, but nobody had come forward to press charges. And since the sit-in, Tracy said, things have quieted down considerably. "We haven't really had sit-ins like that since," said Tracy, thinking back to 1973. "I guess we were pretty radical back then." · Women who were students at the University 20 years ago felt unsafe on campus and felt that campus police were not sensitive to women's needs, Smith-Rosenberg said. One time, Smith-Rosenberg recalls, a campus police official discussing acquaintance rape said that "if a young woman in high heels gets in a car and some guy jumps her, she only has herself to blame." And she said that when two women nurses were raped at the corner of 34th and Chestnut streets, campus police disclaimed all responsibility, saying that, technically, it had happened "off-campus." At the time, only one female police officer was available to deal with rape victims. Now, according to Elena DiLapi, director of the Women's Center, the University "is recognized as a leader in creating a safer campus in terms of sexual violence." The Women's Center now has four full-time staff members and offers a wide array of services catering to everyone ranging from lesbians and minority women to lovers of rape victims. Although cuts in the University's budget have prevented the women's center from receiving the amount of money she thinks it should get, DiLapi said she still feels that "having a women's center makes all the difference in the world." "It's been nice for a change to meet men on campus who aren't threatened by women," she added. Tracy said she can see a difference in the way women are treated whenever she walks on campus now. She said that last year, she was approached by a male student who handed her a pamphlet from Students Together Against Acquaintance Rape. "Needless to say, I was pleasantly surprised," Tracy said. Ruth Wells, director of Victim Support and Special Services said she also has seen many changes in her time at the University. When she took over her job in 1976, Wells was given the task of diversifying a police corps that was made up mainly of white men, with only one woman and a few black men. Over time, she said, she has been able to diversify the police force and to overcome opposition to increase security on campus. Wells said that at first, many students were opposed to the idea of having increased security in dorms, and several administrators opposed the idea of installing blue security lights, saying they might not be aesthetically pleasing. The University Trustees, in their April 13, 1973 meeting "agreed that careful consideration [to installing phones] should be given to the question of aesthetics." The Trustees then questioned the lights' supplier "on his willingness to supply lights which accord with the views of the landscape architect." This year, the University -- headed by University Police Commissioner John Kuprevich -- installed several improved blue light phones off-campus, and campus police today patrol the surrounding areas of the University all day and night. But many women said last week that they still think male-female relations on campus have not sufficiently improved. Smith-Rosenberg said that 20 years ago when Superblock was being built, construction workers harassed the women as they went by. Now, she said, the fraternity members have taken their place. "It's very sad when fraternity boys treat women the same as construction workers did," she said. College senior Liesel Euler said she is also confronted with sexism and harassment on campus. "There is still blatant sexism on an administrative and social level," said Euler, a Women's Studies major. Euler described an incident she witnessed last week at a Locust Walk fraternity house which she said was "social" sexism. She said one of the brothers in the house had been complaining for some time about the strict regulations, the poor attendance and the lack of beer at the party. "[Then he said,] 'What sucks even more, we're paired with the ugliest sororities on campus,' " she said. "That was a blatant example of the objectification of women based on physical appearance," Euler said. And DiLapi said that there is still a marked degree of inequity between the sexes at the University. "If women were truly respected and valued, men would not be raping us," she said. Smith-Rosenberg added that the men who harass women "focus on the body rather than the mind," and she compared it to a man "walking down Locust Walk with a bunch of big gay men in leather whistling at [him] and hitting on" him. · After the April 1973 sit-in, the University formed the Women's Studies Program despite much controversy and opposition from some male faculty members. "People would say, 'Why should we study women? They're not important,' " Tracy said. "It took a group of students sitting in demanding they be allowed to study women to get anything done." The Women's Studies program originally fell under an interdisciplinary program known as the College of Thematic Studies. "I'm a feminist. Women's issues are important to me," said Euler. "Women's studies is interdisciplinary by nature, there are only a few required courses, so I can pursue varied interests." This will be a year of remembrance and celebration for the Women's Studies Program, Smith-Rosenberg said. "We want to celebrate the advances that were made -- now the Women's Studies major has an incredible faculty, as strong as any other university's," she said. "We haven't solved the problems, but there is a sincere interest in recognizing and addressing them." Although the sit-in of 20 years ago marked the high point in women students' activism at the University, students in the past few years have rallied around particular issues on campus as well. During the past three years, women students have protested the presence of fraternities on Locust Walk, spurring on the University's move to diversify the residential make-up of the center of campus. Several events in the past few years have turned to this issue, including a fraternity-co-sponsored "Take Back the Night" event, in which an anti-rape rally on College Green turned into an anti-fraternity "Take Back the Walk" protest. And several organizations focusing mainly on women's issues have cropped up on campus recently, including Students Together Against Acquaintace Rape, Penn's Eagerly Awaited Radical Ladies (P.E.A.R.L.) and the Women's Alliance. Euler said she thinks there is still a strong feminist community at the University, but that it needs to grow because the campus is "patriarchal and conservative." Euler stressed that people are drawn to feminism for different reasons and gave an account of her motives. "I'm a feminist because of the way I experience reality," she said. "My entire perception of reality is very connected to social injustice and certain series of frameworks that I perceive U.S. society to be made up of. It is basically racist, patriarchal, elitist and exclusive."