TRIGGER WARNING: Mentions of power-based personal violence (ex. sexual assault, dating violence, stalking, etc.)
HC: Can you tell me a little bit about yourself?
SR: I am the Women’s Center (WC) Director at DePauw, and I consider it a privilege to do the work that I do. I have been working at the WC for ten years, and I worked at DePauw for another eight years before that. I used to work in the Hartman Center with the Bonner Scholars and Winter Term programs. This year, I get to work with the CDI [Center for Diversity and Inclusion] and LGBTQIA+ services in a more official capacity. I think a lot of students who are part of the queer community land in the Women’s Center, but now it’s kind of official! So JJL [Jeannette Johnson-Licon] and I are both working with LGBTQIA+ services.
HC: What is the Women’s Center?
SR: The Women’s Center is a place that unapologetically focuses on women: women’s interests and needs on campus and in the world. We welcome everybody of all genders to be part of our programs, our services, and our advocacy. We really keep women at the center of that. While we are called the Women’s Center, we serve more than students who identify as women. I would say that folks who are non-binary or genderqueer are a big part of the constituents that we work with, but we also work with students who are men. Also, when we say the Women’s Center, that includes trans women. Trans women are women.
We do both one-time programming as well as ongoing programs that invite people into conversations. We offer services: safer sex supplies, period supplies, pregnancy tests, just the space, tea all the time (usually cookies, too) and whatever resources we have: books, magazines, art supplies. The advocacy that we do is largely based in power-based personal violence (sexual assault, dating violence, stalking, etc.), but we also work with students who need advocacy in their healthcare or in the classroom. Really, advocacy is not what we want it to be, but what a student comes to us with.
That’s kind of the foundation of what we do in the Women’s Center: programs, services, and advocacy. I’m the one staff member who works in the building. We have a resident intern who helps shape the space and welcome students into the space and other student interns who help staff the building and create programs, as well.
HC: As director, what is your role, specifically?
SR: It’s really what students tell me to do. I like to refer to myself as “the old lady who works in the Women’s Center!” And I’m always looking to students for ideas of what they’d like to see. I can tell you what I find interesting, but that may or may not line up with what students find interesting. Responding to students’ interests and needs, or specifically, when students are seeking advocacy through the Sexual Assault Survivor Advocates (SASA) program: that is completely student-directed. My job as an advocate is to help a student have all of the information they need to make an informed decision, but that is totally up to the individual. Advocates don’t tell students what to do – we just walk alongside them and make sure that they’ve got an informed decision-making process. I’m in charge of making sure the space is open, available, and welcoming to students, whether that’s in making sure we’ve got refreshments or furniture and space that students will find welcoming, supervising students, collaborating with colleagues in the CDI or in academic departments or other programs across campus. Sometimes, I describe myself as a professional listener in the Women’s Center. I’m not a mental health professional, so I can’t offer a therapeutic relationship to students, but I can listen and hold space for students. I think that is a really big part of my job. I also consider myself not just an advocate for individual students, but an advocate for institutional change. So when there is an issue that comes up, whether that’s connected to an individual student or not, if we need to make change on campus, that advocacy can be larger than working one on one with a student.
HC: Could you describe a day in the life of your job?
SR: There are some things that are rhythmic or cyclical and similar every day and some things that are different every day. A lot of my day is spent in conversation with colleagues and students. This semester, post-COVID, we’re really putting a lot of effort into creating space for community building on campus here in the Women’s Center and offering regular, weekly programs. Our menu of programs includes supportive discussion groups for sexual assault survivors, as well as for the LGBTQIA+ community. We’ve got a program called “Good Sex” every Thursday. We have “Feminist Fridays,” which is a time for folks to gather before the weekend starts, and on Wednesday evenings we have “Breathing Room,” which is an unprogrammed program for folks to get a cup of tea and connect with others. Especially for our sophomores and our first-year students, creating the opportunity to connect with others and meet in a shared space is really important and something that we’re focusing on right now.
HC: What’s your favorite part of your work?
SR: My favorite part is working with incredibly smart, motivated, creative, resilient students. They are thinking about and doing things that are so beyond what I was doing in college. It is humbling and challenging, in the best way – just the privilege of my life, really, to be able to build relationships on a campus that is so relationship-based. I think we do relationships at DePauw. Students and students or faculty/staff and students or faculty/staff together, we’re a relationship-driven place. To be able to be a part of students’ DePauw experience and see their four years is just amazing.