WOMEN
A YEAR IN R
2009-2010
“It’s been break th
LADIES FIRST BY RYAN BROWN and NAUREEN KHAN Does sexism exist at Duke?
In the Fall of 1972, 900 students packed into
Page Auditorium to listen to President Terry Sanford deliver his opening remarks to the inaugural class of the Trinity College of Arts and Sciences. In many ways, the group of freshfaced first-years gathered that night resembled those who had come before them—privileged, white Southerners at a regional university whose star was beginning to rise nationally. But there was one characteristic that made this class different: among their ranks were 300 women who would attend Duke alongside their male colleagues for the first time. The University had established the Woman’s College in 1924, and in 1972, administrators had decided that Duke would become fully co-educational, merging the historically all-male Trinity College with the Woman’s College. “I hope you will be dissatisfied and will find ways to express that dissatisfaction,” Sanford told the sea of faces assembled in Page that evening. “Not only dissatisfaction with Washington and national affairs, but also with this campus.” One of the women listening to President Sanford speak that night was Kimberly Jenkins, Trinity ’76 and currently one of the 12 women members on the Board of Trustees. The campus she walked on to as a freshman in Fall 1972 was far from the perfect model for co-education. Walking across Main West Quadrangle, Jenkins remembers being appalled to see fraternity boys—perhaps not yet accustomed to women on their turf—lounging on benches outside their dorms and holding up cards to rate girls as they walked past. One day Jenkins turned the corner, ripped out a sheet of notebook paper and made her own rating cards. She marched back to the offending bench, gave the boys a thorough lookdown and handed each their own card. They were equal parts amused and impressed at her gusto. One even asked her on a date. “I think men were aware that this was ridiculous what they were doing,” Jenkins said. “They liked a woman who said it in a humorous way—here’s how it feels.”
From verbal skirmishes on the quad to the 2003
Women’s Initiative, the University has been grappling with how to integrate women into campus life since the 1970s. The 2009-2010 school year has been notable in many ways: a woman at the head of Duke Student Government for the first time in a decade. A female contender in the first-ever Young Trustee election. Two new women’s housing initiatives. A new sexual misconduct policy that mandates the reporting of rape on campus. Panhel’s refusal to participate in the fraternitysponsored Derby Days.
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But are these mere examples of individual women swimming against the cultural tide, or is that tide really turning?
It was Feb. 9, 2010, and senior Chelsea Gold-
stein was exhausted. That day, she hoped, the blistering work of campaigning—parading herself before student organizations and plastering bulletin boards with pithy campaign slogans— would pay off and she would be chosen as the next Young Trustee. That day marked the first time in the position’s 38-year history that the Young Trustee would be elected by the entire student body. But for Goldstein, a former DSG senator, vice-president and presidential candidate, the inner workings of student elections were old hat. So that morning, despite a near-unanimous chorus of student group endorsements backing her, Goldstein was cautious. She was an improbable victor. If she won, she would become only the second female Young Trustee of the decade, and one of a very small number of women to win a major campus election—just five of the 38 DSG presidents since the University went co-ed have been female. But the stats beg the simple question, “Why?” This wasn’t 1972. In 2010, nearly 50 percent of undergraduates were women. Few students could say they didn’t know a number of driven, smart and personable women capable of sitting atop the student government or representing undergraduates on the Board of Trustees. “For whatever reason, I think women… are quite comfortable with that behind-the-scenes role,” Dean of Students Sue Wasiolek said. They don’t feel this need to or desire to embrace that top-level position.” In fact, a female DSG presidential candidate has been present on only four of the last 10 ballots. It remains unclear why the ones who emerge from “behind the scenes” to run are usually unsuccessful. Senior Awa Nur, who was elected to the position last year, is a notable exception: none of the women who have run in the last decade won that race. In Goldstein’s four years with DSG, she said, it “definitely always felt like an old boys’ club.” Some two-thirds of DSG senators are men, and many are also members of fraternities. The social power of fraternities is palpable: every weekend, legions of boat-shoed boys in a rainbow of Lacoste polos invite the student body into their West Campus sections, cans of warm beer in hand and a soundtrack played loud enough to make teeth chatter. Their political power is less visible. The percentage of fraternity members in student government barely exceeds their share of the University as a whole. But Goldstein said she