At the La Crosse Center on November 5th, there was an event to recognize the success of womyn in our community called Tribute To Outstanding Women put on by the YWCA. The YWCA and this event stands for eliminating racism and empowering womyn. Nine womyn were honored and received awards for all their hard work in the community, from social justice, volunteering and teaching to being involved in politics. I, personally, have the pleasure of knowing two of the amazing honorees and was actually able to attend the event myself. You may recognize them yourself; Authrene Ashton (Left) and Antoiwana Williams (Right) both play a big role on our UW-La Crosse campus. Antoiwana is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Higher Education Leadership, while being the Director of the Office of Multicultural Student Services to help retain multicultural students on campus and also works to increase the graduation rate of multicultural students. Authrene is a fellow student at UW-L studying Interpersonal Communication and Spanish. She is also the President of Intercultural Organization Promoting Awareness (IOPA) and is the creator and student advisor of Students Educating and Embracing Diversity (SEEDs), which is a peer education program for students that will take place in residence halls.
Both of these womyn had tear jerking acceptance speeches, and I literally cried for both of them. Antoiwana spoke about her love for her family and how they are her motivation for everything she does, as well as how her mother is her backbone and is so lucky to have been brought up by such an amazing womyn (This is where I cried). Antoiwana also shed some light on how racism needs to end, talking about her personal experiences and leaving us all with a challenge. The challenge was to start spelling women with a “y” instead of an “e”. We womyn have done a lot for our country, and it goes highly unnoticed in history books, politics and statistics. The word “men” in the word “women” makes us a subset of men, and we as womyn should refuse to be defined by men. I have already taken the challenge as you can see in this article, and I encourage you to as well. Authrene spoke about growing up in a single-mothered household and how her mom did whatever it took for her to be in a place where her possibilities could become endless. Then, Authrene shared that she believes her mother should be the one up there accepting the award that she was receiving (where I started to cry again), but Authrene feels blessed to be in all the positions that she is in.
We as UW-L are so lucky to have such incredible womyn on our campus that help increase diversity, help retain students of color, teach what diversity is and work so hard to end racism. I personally would like to say, from knowing these womyn for a few years now, that they are indeed some of the most influential leaders on campus. I appreciate everything they do for me and all other students of color on our campus. We are honored that they continuously are working with and for us. If you happen to see Antoiwana or Authrene around campus, make sure you stop and congratulate them on all their well deserved success!