prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.
Sexism is not a topic we think about every single day, and it is definitely not a behavior that we think we inflict on our peers, but unfortunatly we do.
Alanna Harrist is a freshman here at OSU who wants to see a change on sexism here on our campus. Being that she is a Business Management and Marketing major you might wonder why she feels so passionalty about this topic, but it all started when she decided to take a Intro to Gender Women Studies class this spring semester. “For our final assignment, we had to do a project to demostrate feminism on campus,” Alanna stated. “I thought sexism would be an interesting topic to cover since it is rarely talked about on our campus.”
Campus Sexism is the twitter page that Alanna created to reach her Oklahoma State peers at a more personal level. On her twitter page you will find a signature hastag named #CampusSexism that she uses to ask students what their experience with sexism have been.
A study by Huffington Post found that women and minorities are often made to feel like they do not belong on the campus — for example, that they only got in thanks to affirmative action. Also a study by the Asscioation of American Colleges and Universities stated that such topics as sexual objectification, assumptions of inferiority and use of sexist language continue the sexist evironment on college campuses.
When asked about the sexist environment on our campus, Alanna stated, “At OSU it is very hard to realize who is being sexist, and who is not. I have witnessed my professor voicing sexism over me and my fellow women classmates in my Business Class. The whole time he sexualized the things we should wear to an interview, and focused primarliy on what men should wear, and the different fashion trends for them, and catergorized us women into only wearing boring suits.”
If problems like this continue in our classrooms, then how do we expect to progress as a university? I encourage you to follow Alanna’s campaign on twitter, and tweet your expeiences with sexism here on campus to raise awareness, but to also set up a safe space for everyone at OSU.
Twitter: @CampusSexism
Alanna Harrist- Twitter & Instagram: @Alanna Harrist / Facebook: Alanna Harrist