Rebuilding Manhood Applications are now available! 

What do you enjoy about being a man? What do you wish was different?
What does it mean to be a man? When and how did you learn to become a man? 

All undergraduate students who identify as men are encouraged to apply. 

Apply online at: http://womenscenter.umbc.edu/rebuilding-manhood/

We’re excited to share our very first alumni post! The reflection below was written by Cassandra Morales (UMBC Class of 2013) who worked in the Women’s Center from 2012-2013.

Binge-watching Netflix is a favorite college past-time that I carried into my post-undergraduate life. There is nothing like the satisfaction of finishing all seven seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer, or the excitement of the addition of a new season of Call the Midwife. When the third season of Scandal was added, I happily started it. However, out of all the twists and turns, there was one that stood out to me, and one that I continue to think on; when Mellie is raped by her father-in-law, it may not be the most shocking twist, but it is one I feel is worth critique.

For most, the actual experience of rape is not like a bad day at work, but it’s treated in the same light: many of the characters are impacted for a few days and then get over it quickly. The event happens in a vacuum, dealt with and dispensed in only a few episodes. To me, this seems like a highly unrealistic representation and indicative of the fact that it’s not about the victim, but for the story or other characters. The viewer does grasp how far Mellie is willing to go to further her husband’s political career (and therefore her own). What is not explained is how Mellie copes with the trauma, and, much like real-life cases, the focus is not the impact on the victim, but the impact on everyone else.

While writing this, I realized what might be the most frustrating part is that I can say this is not the most shocking twist in Scandal. Inadequate representations of rape are highly prevalent in TV shows nowadays (American Horror Story, Game of Thrones, and The Walking Dead to name a few). While I do think TV shows are a good platform to discuss rape and sexual assault, it does not seem right that it is only portrayed in one way. Sexual assault happens in so many different ways, impacts the victim in different ways*, and that should be reflected in what we watch. I begin to wonder if people who are most able to write about that experience, women specifically, are not well represented among the writers of these shows.

I will not stop watching Scandal, nor for that matter will I stop binge-watching TV on Netflix. However, what I will take away from this experience is the importance of being a conscious consumer. Critiquing a show that you love (or a store, or a sport) does not inherently mean that you must write it off. In fact, it means the opposite. I love watching TV and I am deeply invested in what I watch. As a woman, as well as a feminist, I must ask that my experiences, and the experiences of my peers, be valued in my TV shows because I value them. By critiquing them, I am more aware of what is lacking in my favorite shows. As a result, I am able to create what I want to see in the world. I encounter problematic issues in the places I shop, the music I listen to, and even the books that I read. It is impossible to be without a problematic aspect in your life. Ignoring these issues solves nothing. With my power as a consumer, I am obligated to reflect and critique and ask for more.

*If you know someone who has been sexually assaulted, here’s some important ways you can respond and support. UMBC community members can also receive support and resources through UMBC’s Voices Against Violence Program and offices like the Women’s Center. For more information on resources, visit the Women’s Center website. 

Critical Social Justice week is fast approaching (this February from the 16th to the 20th) and the theme this year is “Creating Brave Spaces”. To unpack and explore this idea, we had the Critical Social Justice Student Alliance tell us what the theme meant to them and how we can use it in our social justice work. Emily Eaglin, incoming president of this new student organization, created this helpful video that documents our conversation and expands upon what brave spaces can be. Check it out below!

We were inspired by Brian Arao and Kristi Clemens’ article, “From Safe Spaces to Brave Spaces,” and for some highly recommended further reading, you can access it here.

If you’re interested in learning more about the Critical Social Justice campaign, check out our WordPress, like our Facebook page, and/or follow us on Twitter!

The Women's Center is excited to announce that the Returning Women Students Scholarships Application for 2015-2016 is now available. The deadline for submission is Friday, April 3, 2015.

This common application enables eligible students to apply for more than one of the Returning Women Students Scholarships using the same application. The three available scholarships are:

• Charlotte W. Newcombe Scholarship & The UMBC Scholarship for Mature Students
• AEGON Scholarship
• The Richard & Roselyn Bryson Neville Memorial Fund for Returning Women Scholarship

All undergraduate students over the age of 25 and with at least 60 credits may be eligible. You must be completing your first undergraduate degree. 

Each scholarship has additional eligibility requirements which can be found on the common application instructions. 

The application is attached to this announcement. Please be sure to read over the eligibility requirements before applying. 

If you have any questions concerning the application process or the scholars program requirements, please contact Jess at womens.center@umbc.edu. 

We will also be hosting 2 informational sessions related to the application process and scholars program requirements. The information sessions will be held in the Women's Center on Wednesday, February 25th from 12-1pm or Wednesday, March 26th from 4-4:45pm.

Applications are due Friday, April 3rd at 4pm

Critical Social Justice organizers Amelia Meman, Lisa Gray, and Megan Tagle Adams share a few of their thoughts about self-care in/as social justice work. 

AMELIA: Coming up on CSJ 2015, I’m thinking about generosity, compassion, and sustainability, especially in regard to how these connect with movement building and the self. I think about generosity in regard to the tough situations we get into (the difficult dialogues, you could say), and how I and others should be cognizant about the differences we are bringing into conversations and the mutual respect we all deserve; the generosity we extend is integral to building bridges and coalition. With our selves, in small conversations, in bigger conversations, between movements, I hope we can strive for generosity while continuing to work towards a more critical engagement. Compassion is directly related to how I try to deal with both myself, and others. I try to be aware of the needs of others, to listen and learn from them, to care and empower them, while also trying to know when I need to take care of myself—when I need compassion. This act of self-care and the generosity above are crucial to both my sustainability as a (critical) social justice warrior and to Critical Social Justice itself. As we work towards building a campus initiative that will continue into the years, I am focused on all three of the aspects—generosity, compassion, and sustainability—the cyclical nature between them, and the way they affect both our groups and the individuals in them.

LISA: Yes, Amelia. Your idea of of viewing social justice movement building through the lenses of generosity, compassion and sustainability resonates with me! Far too often, those of us who engage in what we hope is (critical) and reflective social justice work, here at UMBC and beyond, short change the “how” of the work as it relates to self care and community care. It’s hard to be generous with our energies, talents, and skills or have compassion for others when we don’t take the time to give it to ourselves first. And yes, as Audre Lorde so beautifully stated, “caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” As I think about both my personal role as well as the Student Life Mosaic Center’s role in actively supporting sustainability for CSJ in 2015 and beyond, I believe it can happen only by intentionally engaging in high levels of generosity and compassion as well as empathy and self-reflection. I believe that empathy will help us better relate to one another’s unique positionality as we move through the intersectional aspects of our shared work while self-reflection will keep us honest about how our privileged and underrepresented identities either help or hinder the impact of that work. This year’s theme of Creating Brave Spaces provides a great platform for us to use generosity, compassion, empathy and self-reflection to help our campus to learn and grow as educators, activists and (critical) social justice change agents in person or online.

MEGAN: Amelia and Lisa, that quote from Audre Lorde that you both reference has also been instrumental in shaping my own approach to self-care and sustainability in doing social justice work. While social media has made it much easier for me to constantly learn about various social justice issues and perspectives that I may not have otherwise encountered, I’m also trying to be mindful of the impact of this immersion. I sometimes feel overwhelmed by the (perhaps self-imposed) pressure to be all in at all times. When I feel intellectually and emotionally exhausted after a long day of engaging in these difficult dialogues, even scrolling through Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook doesn’t provide much of a respite since my feeds are about 90% feminism-related and 10% cat pictures. However, for me it’s been helpful to shift my understanding of what self-care looks like so that it doesn’t necessarily mean taking a break from social change work but rather re-framing my own commitment social justice as an act of self-preservation and self-care in itself.

For all of those interested in being involved in the planning process for UMBC's Take Back the Night, please fill out this form. 

If you serve on the committee, please plan to be available to also volunteer on the night of the event, April 16th, from roughly 5-9:30pm.

Planning meetings will be held every two weeks on Wednesdays at noon.
For more information, contact Jess at womens.center@umbc.edu.

A Reflection by Women’s Center Director, Jess Myers.

As our world transitions into the winter holiday spirit, I am less than eager to celebrate this year. I am sad, angry, and feeling hopeless in the wake of grand jury decisions that are rooted in deep injustices and a system that does not work for all. When I look back on 2014, I’m tempted to just call it a wrap. Nothing positive to reflect on this year, folks… let’s pack it up and move on. Yet, the top lists of 2014 (here, here, and here) keep circulating through my social media feeds and I keep coming back to this reflection, digging for ways to find hope. I found it in re-reading the story of our new Women’s Center logo. Loyal. Constant. Strong and Resilient. Season to Season. Survival. Growth. In the face of injustice, the Women’s Center continues to grow its roots and extend its branches to keep doing the important work of growing intersectional feminism and cultivating critical social justice.

With this as inspiration, my list is easier to write. Here’s some of my favorite Women’s Center moments of 2014. What are yours?

Introducing our new Women’s Center logo to the UMBC Community
In January 2014, we rolled out our new logo. We wanted and needed a logo that would speak to the depth of all the Women’s Center is and can be for our UMBC community. We found it in the Wye Oak tree. What’s just as exciting is that conversations and brainstorming for the logo inspired us to revisit the mission statement of the Women’s Center. After a good run of almost 20 years, it’s about time we update it! We’ve spent a great deal of 2014 reflecting deeply on who we are and who we want to be and we’re excited to do another introduction of our new mission statement in 2015.

It was the inaugural year of Critical Social Justice

With 17 events and 15 co-sponsors, Critical Social Justice was successfully launched despite the polar vortex and a campus snow day. The theme of Engaging in Difficult Dialogues was explored in various ways throughout the week and called us all to think about the meanings and challenges of social justice from many different angles and across different spaces. The keynote address was brilliantly delivered by Jay Smooth who provided important strategies for engaging in difficult dialogues (check out his How to Tell Someone They Sound Racist video) and the importance of using our privilege to help “carve out a space” for the underrepresented and people rendered invisible in our world (for more on that, check out this awesome video). Later in the year, Reina Gossett came to campus as part of the CSJ line up in the fall and highlighted the lives of trans activists, Sylvia Rivera and Marsha P. Johnson and challenged us to reconsider history knowing so many marginalized people’s experiences are “written outside the archives.”
Just as importantly, every time I talk about Critical Social Justice I feel called to name the fact that a student staff member was the person who first envisioned CSJ. Amelia Meman spent her first semester working in the Women’s Center crafting the idea with support and nuance from our Coordinator, Megan Tagle Adams, to get it to the important initiative it is today. Once again, I’m reminded that the work of social justice doesn’t have to be a waiting game. You don’t need to wait until you’re deemed a leader or figure head or have been cited as an expert. It’s everybody’s work and everybody’s job.

For more on CSJ 2014, explore #CSJ2014 on Twitter or check out the CSJ website. And, get excited for CSJ: Creating Brave Spaces coming to UMBC February 16-20, 2015!

The snow didn’t stop us from Taking Back the Night

One of my favorite song lyrics sings “this year April had a blizzard just to show she does not care” and that repeated over and over in my head as I watched huge chunks of snow begin to fall outside at this year’s Take Back the Night. Only on this cold night in April, UMBC community members did in fact care so very much. Over 250 community members packed themselves on to Main Street and listened for almost two hours to over 20 students who shared their experiences of sexual assault at the Speak Out. They then marched throughout the Commons to help take back the night and spread awareness that rape and sexual assault are not UMBC values and must stop. So take that snow!

The launch of our new roundtable series

This year we officially said good bye to our long standing film series and instead offered a new roundtable series. Our first three roundtables (in February, September, and November) explored the intersection of race and gender and provided thought-provoking conversations in addition to validation and supportive space for UMBC community members to share the personal ways race and gender influences their lived experiences. With our largest crowd edging over 60 participants, we’re looking forward to what the spring line-up of roundtables will bring!

Presenting at the National Women’s Studies Association’s annual conference

While this favorite memory of 2014 may not directly impact everyone in our community, attending and presenting at NWSA was pretty awesome. First of all… bell hooks and Angela Davis were there and did not disappoint in their speaking of important truths and calls to put intersectional feminist into action. Three Women’s Center staff members also presented at NWSA. Student staff member, Amelia Meman, and our coordinator, Megan Tagle Adams, led two roundtable sessions addressing women of color voices at women’s, gender equity, and sexuality centers. They created important space to recognize the work of women of color working in women’s centers and the barriers they face as they navigate and disrupt the historic and present white-centrism of women’s centers. And, after spending almost a year researching, interviewing, coding, and writing, my research team finally did our first presentations together exploring the activist strategies that students use in their sexual assault activism work. We were able to share the ways these activists are specifically using social media as a tool to create awareness about sexual assault on their campuses and advocate for institutional and legislative changes. Overall, tons of learning to be had by all of us and we hope we’re better staff folks for the Women’s Center and UMBC community because of our learning experiences at this year’s NWSA conference.

Awesome Blog Posts and Staff Members

I don’t know about you, but I read every post on this little blog page of ours. We spend each staff meeting assigning writing deadlines to student staff members, and I’ll be honest, sometimes, I feel like writing is one of their least favorite assignments. Then, they post these amazing stories about their lives and important reflections about their experiences (I’m not kidding… read this and this and this  and this for starters). They allow themselves to become vulnerable and raw in their writings in a way that truly reflects the spirit and values of our Women’s Center community. Beyond their writing, our Women’s Center staff members show up to work each day with a fierce commitment to making the Women’s Center a better place. They challenge me to grow and push me to be brave. The Women’s Center wouldn’t be us without the important work our students do. I’m thankful for them.

Just as importantly, throughout 2014, our older (and newer) programs and groups continued to serve as cornerstones to the Women’s Center community. We now have a peer-to-peer mentoring program for returning women students and two of our Newcombe Scholars (Amy and Melissa) were featured on the Class of 2014 website. Rebuilding Manhood just wrapped up its 5th cohort experience. The Women of Color Coalition continued to gain momentum and participation. Between Women entered into its third year of providing important space for LGBTQ women’s voices. The Spectrum community met on a weekly basis to provide meaningful and revolutionary space for trans students to simply be them.

Perhaps our country is indeed on a brink of a movement of change. If that’s the case, this year’s reflection leads me to believe the Women’s Center community and its members are ready to rise up and be counted in the fight for justice.