The article below was first published in the spring 2016 issue of Ms. Subscribe today to read more about campus rape, along with a profile of Lupita Nyong’o, the women taking on climate change and much more. When New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo wanted to seal the deal last summer on his groundbreaking campus anti-rape bill, “Enough Is Enough,” he […]
Education
4 (Intersectional!) Ways to Stop Campus Sexual Assault
Over the past few weeks, news of a 500-word essay assigned as punishment for sexual assault at Gustavas College in Minnesota and of a series of sexual harassment charges filed against faculty at UC Berkeley have put campus sexual violence back in the national spotlight. These stories have focused on how Title IX—the federal law that prohibits […]
The Woman Who Revolutionized Campus Life for Female Students
When Mary Bunting began her academic career in 1937, women like her had limited opportunities in a higher education world dominated by men. By the time she retired five decades later, many of the nation’s elite universities—including Harvard, Yale, Princeton and the service academies—had gone coeducational, due largely to Bunting’s transformative advocacy for women in […]
How to Make Campus Violence-Prevention Programs Better
Colleges and universities are rushing to find quick fixes for the alarming levels of campus violence. Campus officials know the data from the recent Washington Post/Kaiser Family Foundation poll: around 25 percent of college women experience an unwanted sexual incident before graduation. To keep students safe, avoid lawsuits and retain federal grant dollars, many colleges and […]
Rutgers Surpasses $2 Million Mark for Gloria Steinem Endowed Chair
Reprinted with permission from Rutgers Today A little more than a year after launching a campaign to create an endowed chair in honor of modern American feminist Gloria Steinem, Rutgers University officials announced they have surpassed the $2 million mark in donations. The funds, totaling $2.1 million from more than 250 individuals and 12 foundations, put […]
Why Campus Women’s Centers Matter
The National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) recently changed its bylaws, effectively removing the dedicated seats for women’s center professionals from the governing council of the organization. In their November 20 resignation letter to the NWSA, the co-chairs of the NWSA Women’s Centers Committee, Gina Helfrich and Adale Sholock, noted that the removal of “formal representation of […]
What a Truly Effective Sex Ed Curriculum Looks Like
The pathways by which gender norms drive adolescent sexual experience and health are easy to imagine. Anthony coerces a girl at a party to have sex, in order to satisfy his buddies’ questions about his heterosexuality. Jessica has unwanted sex because she’s afraid her boyfriend will become violent again if she refuses. Sofía becomes pregnant […]
Feminist Groups to Feds: It’s Time to Protect Students from Harassment
A coalition of more than 70 women’s and civil rights groups today called on the Department of Education to remind post-secondary schools that it’s their legal obligation to protect students from harassment under Title IX and the Civil Rights Act. In the wake of threats faced by women students at the University of Mary Washington (UMW) on the […]
We Heart: Students Wearing Scarlet Letters to Protest a Sexist Dress Code
Young women at the Charleston County School of the Arts in South Carolina have been pinning homemade scarlet letters to their clothing to protest a school dress code policy they say is sexist. Organizers of the protest say they don’t oppose a dress code, but disagree with how it is disproportionately enforced with girls, while boys are given […]
What You Never Learned About American History: War Edition
As American history classes threaten to erase the existence of Jim Crow laws and the Ku Klux Klan from their textbooks, the Ms. Blog thought it might be a good time to revisit the history that our schools often fail to teach us—from the systematic genocide of Native Americans to the nationalism that fuels wars. […]