Editorial : Campus should take advantage of discussion on women’s needs at SU

Gauging campus need for a women’s center has remained a project of the University Senate’s Women’s Concerns Committee for more than three years. The committee issued faculty and staff surveys, which received little response and came back with inconclusive results.

Syracuse University once had a vibrant women’s center at the Women’s Building, which slowly evolved into a hodgepodge of offices and athletic facilities wholly unrelated to the advancement of and services for women. Inconclusive survey results don’t necessarily indicate SU no longer needs a center for women.

The Women’s Concerns Committee should make further surveying and forums a priority moving forward. Asking professors to take a few minutes out of class time to deliver surveys may be an effective alternative. Or open dialogue among campus members at open forums or discussion groups may prove to be more effective than a written survey.

But the university community — women in particular — should get involved, if that means calling for a women’s center, suggesting what that center should offer or speaking out against one. This is an important opportunity for the students, faculty and staff to ask the university for something they feel is lacking, whether it is simply a centralized space for projects and offices related to women, an office offering clinical or counseling services for women only, or a resource center for academic and professional advancement.

The evolution of the Women’s Building and the breakup of a special space for women may indicate SU’s community would make little use of a women’s center. But it may indicate past administrations’ failure to change the services offered at the Women’s Building to fit the evolving values, community and definition of women at SU. Whatever the findings, this is an historic chance to investigate and reflect on the needs of contemporary women at a college campus.