| The Struggle For a Women |
|
By Daniella Matthews-Trigg and Bethan Lamb, Co-Chairs of Choice USA Mills Chapter When people think of Mills College in the Bay Area, they often think of a feminist/queer mecca where students are encouraged to express themselves and stand up for what they believe in with little or no penalties or hindrance. As students, we look back to the 90’s, when Mills women stood up against the administration to protect our women’s only school and won. One would expect that with this history and environment a student initiative to open a women’s health resource center on campus would be a breeze…however, we found that it was anything but free of retaliation and roadblocks. Our efforts began in 2006 when the Choice USA Mills chapter decided that we would tackle reproductive justice issues in our own community. Our campus hasn’t had a health center since the 1950’s and we felt that in order to insure access to healthcare, and especially reproductive healthcare, for all students we needed to start one up again. For the last ten or so years Mills students have been using the UC Berkeley health center, which, while large and comprehensive is also impersonal and difficult to get to. Additionally, issues that pertain to the mills community in particular are not as easily or readily addressed at UCB.The choice USA chapter decided that the first steps to tackling healthcare on campus would be to take stock of what Mills students wanted and needed. The results from this pointed to a peer-run, on campus health center. We collected close to a thousand signatures (keep in mind that Mills has approx.1000 students) and took them to the administration with a request for a space to build our center. While outwardly supportive, the administration put up many road blocks and red tape in our way. Despite our frustrations we continued to gather support from students and faculty. Finally we felt that we had the school, including the administration on our side, because they had promised at the end of spring 2007 that we would have a space by the beginning of the following fall semester. We excitedly began gathering resources and materials for our new center and making community contacts in the healthcare and reproductive justice communities. Fall 2007 started with no available space and even less support. The first semester consisted of constant meetings and repeated requests that were the same things we had asked for the previous year. In the spring a “traveling women’s health resource center” was created in protest of us not having a space. Additionally, a roundtable with students, faculty, staff and community members was held to talk about specific needs and goals. Choice USA also organized a huge sex positive fair on campus in February 2008, which was a huge success and brought a lot of attention to the struggle. The year ended with a large number of students wearing shirts saying “where is the Mills College Women’s health Resource Center?” with an awesome women’s symbol to highlight the absurdity of Mills not having one. This August we all returned to school and were told that we’d been given a space! We excitedly started putting up what materials we had in order to occupy the space and claim it as our own. One of these materials we had was a beautiful painting of internal female anatomy painted by a student. We hung it proudly on the wall with labels pointing to the anatomical features (exp. cervix, ovary). About three days later the WHRC board members received an email stating that our room is “…a public space and therefore we would ask that your posters of genitalia and the postcard stating the support of consensual sex (in reference to the CA NOW anti-rape campaign) be placed in a more discreet location and not on the walls. Whereas in theory we support free expression, there are multiple needs in the building and we need to balance them all.” Then, when we hadn’t moved these offending materials to a more discreet location by the next day, someone went into our center and removed them. Needless to say we were horrified. We immediately wrote a response letter saying that “…as a women’s health center, those images are crucial to educating women about their bodies. At Mills, we should be open minded and support freedom of expression, not just ‘in theory’”. A meeting was held with the WHRC board and the administration and it was a lesson in picking our battles…we agreed to keep our space “discreet” from the outside (keep blinds drawn, etc) in exchange for more administrative support. The meeting, while still frustrating and perhaps too compromising, at least allowed us to take the next steps to officially open the center…AN OPENING PARTY!!! In honor of National Coming Out Week we titled our party the Mills College Women’s Health Resource Center Coming Out Party! It is going to be this Friday, Oct.10th and we are super stressed AND super excited! We have amazing friends and comrades in this struggle who will be live-DJing, preparing gourmet hor d’eurves and setting up the room in a theme of purple, pink, gold and black! The center is set to officially open on the following Monday, October 13th. We are still collecting resources and supplies from many different amazing organizations who have pledged their support. However, we’re still looking for books for our library and anatomy models and posters and anything else people can spare … We have been dreaming about this day for so long and the fact that it is almost here is so exciting! …We’d also like to take this chance to send a shout-out to Erin Mowlds, who graduated from Mills last year. Erin is our guru, our inspiration and a reproductive justice power house! If anyone would like more information please contact Bethan lamb at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it or Daniella Matthews-Trigg at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it |
