Feminist Forum Magazine January 2019

Loyola University New Orleans Women’s Resource Center

The Feminist Forum February 2019

Women Rising At Loyola

COVER 28 The Feminist Loyola University New Orleans Women’s Resource Center

Forum

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Faces of Fourth Wave Feminism

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Business Blurb with Bukle

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TransTalks

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Her Story: A Feminist Book Club

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Broads Abroad

Students of Loyola

January 2019

Women Rising At Loyola

Women Rising: The Trailblazing New Leaders at Loyola University New Orleans

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Patricia Boyett, Skye Johnson, & Tess Rowland

Director's Desk: Like Phoenixes We Rise Patricia Boyett

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Watchwords: Intersectionality Emmaline Bouchillon Carrie Elizabeth Smith

Hadori Bukle Leo Thomas

Tess Rowland

Victoria Williams

Authorization

Feminist Forum is an unofficial publication of the Women’s Resource Center. Views and opinions expressed are not necessarily those of the Women’s Resource Center or Loyola University New Orleans.

Loyola University New Orleans Women’s Resource Center

The Feminist Forum 2

Vol. II, No. 1 February 2019 www.loyno.edu/womenscenter

Submissions

Submissions are welcome and should be submitted to wrc@loyno.edu. The Feminist Forum editors reserve the right to all final decisions.

Loyola University New Orleans has fully supported and fostered in its educational programs, admissions, employment practices, and in the activities it operates the policy of not discriminating on the basis of age, color, disability, national origin, race, religion, sex/gender, or sexual orientation.

This policy is in compliance with all applicable federal regulations and guidelines.

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Music & The Movement

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Standing in Solidarity

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Feminist Features

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Feminist Fits

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A Woman's World: The Blue Wave & The American Awakening

Carolyne Johnson

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Take Back the Night

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It is a Tree of Life & I WIll Hold Fast To It

Serena Hill

Skye Johnson

Delaney Harper

Lauryn Langford

Rae Green, Lauryn Langford, Grac Riddick, Tyler Sanchez, Sky Stubbs, Rula Thabata with art by Shelby Pojawa, Erika Torres, & Storm Wells

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Margaux Schexnider

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Women Rising in the Political Arena

Emmaline Boucillon, Patricia Boyett, Skye Johnson, & Tess Rowland

Breaking Barriers with Jared Polis: 56 "Five Awake" The Women Who LGBT in Governent Changed Domestic Violence Laws Tess Rowland and Stephanie Adams in Louisian Patricia Boyett Unpacking Rape Culture Delaney Harper 61 Supporting Immigrant Families Susan Weisher

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Chameleons

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Ode to my Oppressor

Emmaline Bouchillon Marina Britos-Swain

Our Mission

In the path of the Ignatius mission at Loyola University New Orleans, we, as a feminist community, seek to educate ourselves through critical analysis; we endeavor to empower the oppressed through devotion to diversity and uplift; and we pursue equality through social justice.

Production Team Director/Editor in Chief Patricia Boyett Managing Editor Emmaline Bouchillon Senior Editor Grace Riddick

Editors Delaney Harper Skye Johnson Serena Hill Artistic Directors Lance Taylor Jessica White

Art Team Emmaline Bouchillon Hannah Castillo Gabi Hawkins Shelby Pojwa Carrie Elizabeth Smith Erika Torres Storm Wells Leo Thomas

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Reflections from the Director's Desk

Like Phoenixes

WE RISE

By Patricia Boyett

F

eminists, like phoenixes, have risen from the sexist and bigoted firestorm that raged across America with the 2016 election, and we have cultivated a massive fourth wave intersectional and intergenerational movement that is catapulting feminists to power. We organized; we led letter writing campaigns; we hosted forums; we held vigils; we launched protests; we marched; we supported feminists running for office. And on November 6, the midterm elections delivered a wave of diverse women and members of LGBTQ community to the House of Representatives and to the governor’s mansions in several states. As we prepare to embark upon a new day in our political arenas in 2019, we celebrate the undaunted feminist spirit.

sexism embedded in America’s history. Yet I also thought that after centuries of people of color, women, religious minorities, and the LGBTQ+ community fighting in social justice movements for equal rights that we had come far enough that a man who blaWhen I arrived at the Women’s Resource tantly delivered racist, sexist, and bigoted Center at Loyola University New Orleans rhetoric on the campaign trail could not not long after dawn, my student staff start- win. I was wrong. Another backlash was ed trickling in early too. It was as though coming. Violent white supremacists who we needed to gravitate toward each other, had been pushed to the margins would feel to seek out our community of feminists. emboldened to come out of the shadows.

Some had been devoted Hillary fans; others What horror would they unleash? loved Bernie; some loved neither; some had voted for Republican senators and congress We worked like ghosts all day, moving members. None of us thought Hillary Clin- between shock, sorrow, and anger. As I ton was a perfect candidate; many of us had crisscrossed the campus for meetings, I great disdain for Bill Clinton because of his crossed paths with survivors of sexual ashorrible treatment of women. Of course, sault who I had worked with in the center.

Two years ago, I could not imagine we he wasn’t running. She was. Her defense I tried to say something hopeful to them, would be where we are now. I remember so of him was problematic. But Trump was but everything I said seemed hollow. How vividly the early morning hours of Nosomething else entirely. His sexist treatcould I help them feel safe in a country vember 9, 2016 when I watched in shock ment of women was coupled with ferothat elected a president who had been acand anguish as news anchors called the cious prejudice. And we were grappling to cused by so many women of sexual assault presidential election for Donald J. Trump. understand how thoughtful Americans, and harassment and who boasted about The fear reverberating through me had to those who were not sexist bigots, could groping women? How could I help women do with the man, not the Republican Party. vote for him. feel valued in a country in which so many I believe that any strong representative called Trump’s boasts “locker room talk,” democracy needs diverse viewpoints exMost of my students shared my devotion to as if it were funny to brag about assaulting pressed in at least two, if not more parties. a representative democracy that staves off women? I retreated into my office hours It was the election of this particular man dictatorships through a robust party sysbefore my class, trying to figure out the that worried me. I could not understand tem. We understood that many people have words to say to my students in my afterhow so many Americans could vote for a allegiance to their parties, and many of us noon freshmen seminar, “Gender Violence man who had boasted that he groped wom- had many friends and relatives who voted and Justice.” I had no words. en’s genitals and who had been accused for Trump. But if ever a time emerged to by over a dozen women of sexual assault break from one’s party, surely that time had On my way to class, I saw Barbara Ewell, and harassment, who had called Mexicans come when the nominee peddled in preju- an English professor and one of the women “rapists,” who had insulted a Muslim gold dice and chauvinism. As a professor spewho created the Women’s Studies program star family, and who had applauded a white cializing in racial and gender history, I was in the 1990s and reopened the Women’s man for punching a black man at one of not naive about the racism, bigotry, and Resource Center at the turn of the 21st

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his rallies. I changed the channel so many times in hopes that some newscaster would correct the mistake. But it wasn’t a mistake.

At 4:00 p.m., I crawled into bed. I couldn’t sleep. I decided to go into work early.

Maya Angelou,” I sucked in a breath and read: “You may write me down in history, With your bitter, twisted lies, You may trod me in the very dirt, But still, like dust, I'll rise.” I felt my voice shake. I thought of Barbara and tried to steel myself with her strength as I continued:

century. I knew she had booked a trip to Washington D.C. in January, expecting to witness the inauguration of the first woman president. “Oh Barbara,” I said. She smiled wistfully and hugged me and said something like, “We’re stronger than him,” and “the struggle continues.” Barbara is always strong like that. And it’s wonderfully contagious.

When I arrived in my classroom at 3:30 p.m. in Bobet Hall, I found my students huddled in their seats so quiet, many of them wiping the tears that kept rolling down their faces no matter how they tried to stop them. I thought of all we had discussed all semester about sexual assault, domestic abuse, hate crimes against the LGBTQ+ community, and terror attacks on girls who sought education across the globe. I thought of how much we admired activists who stood up to gender violence: Recy Taylor, Sylvia Rivera, Marsha P. Johnson, and Malala. We found so much hope in the movements for change. And in our own time in America, we had witnessed President Barack Obama call himself a feminist. But that progress, that hope, seemed to be slipping away from us.

“You may shoot me with your words, you may cut me with your eyes, you may kill me with your hatefulness. But still, like air, I’ll rise.”

As I read on, I felt the spirit of Angelou and all the women and their allies who have stood up again and again, facing challenges far more daunting than I ever had as a white woman. And I knew then that if they could rise in the face of such brutal and murderous cruelty, all of us could summon such courage to rise too.

When I finished the poem and looked out at my class, I noticed a student hiding her face behind her long curly hair and trying to silence the sobs that wracked her small frame. I knelt next to her desk.

“We’ll be okay,” I promised. “We can rise too.” She nodded and hugged me, and I prayed that I was right, that Barbara was right, that we would be okay. When I rose, I saw hope mingling with the fear in the young faces staring back at me. So I put away the lecture I had planned; and we just talked all class about our fears and hopes. I invited them to a screening that night that the Women’s Resource Center was hosting:

Equal Means Equal directed by Kamala Lopez.

My student staff and I had thought we would be celebrating the election of the first woman president in America and that we would be discussing how we might act as a community to challenge our new leaders to advance gender equality. Instead, after the screening, my student staff members and I, along with many students who had gathered, planned to start a social justice movement to resist the backlash that we believed was coming; we planned to build it on our campus in line with our university’s mission of empowering the oppressed. And so we began to rise. When I returned home and shared the news with my husband, he teased me that I had gone through the stages of grief quickly: rushing from shock, pain, anger, and depression to rebuilding. We were still grieving I suppose, but planning a nonviolent movement gave us a place to direct our fear and anguish into something meaningful.

By Friday, we hosted an organizational meeting at the center for this unformed movement in our minds. Over a hundred students, faculty, and staff arrived; we had to move from our living room space to our wide hallway to accommodate everyone.

So we began there, all of us sitting on the floor, sharing ideas, thinking past our grief to our resistance. The following week, the WRC collaborated with various student organizations and several professors and staff members to host a walkout, showing our solidarity with each other and with all marginalized groups against all forms of

It was not that we all shared the same political affiliations; the ideologies ran the gamut from the left to the middle to the right. But many in the class had feared the possible election of Trump because of his rhetoric toward women and marginalized groups. I worried most of all for the many students who were of minority races, ethnicities, religions, and orientations and for those who were transgender, for their intersecting marginalized identities made them more vulnerable. How might this new world treat them? I felt lost in their pain and mine, not sure how I, as a white, cisgender woman, could say something that might diminish their sorrow, curtail their fear, and give them hope.

So I began with the words of someone else.

I opened my notebook and read, “I Rise, by

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prejudice and oppression. And then off we were—rising the best we could, fumbling often in response to the massiveness of it all, but still moving forward.

Over the next two years, my students, colleagues, and I found various ways to rise; we showed up for the Women’s March in New Orleans—some even made the trip to Washington D.C. for the main march.

Together We Rise became the motto of the new Women’s Movement and the title of the book celebrating it by the organizers of the Women’s March and Condé Nast. And we rose in our corner of America at the Women’s Resource Center at Loyola.

We continued to host workshops teaching women how to run for office and how to rise in the workforce by negotiating their salaries and promotions. We created our magazine, Feminist Forum. We sponsored Transgender 101 seminars, panels on rape culture, and workshops on running for student government. We held letterwriting campaigns to save the Violence Against Women Act, to preserve the Affordable Care Act, to stop the separation of immigration families. We kept marching and speaking in Take Back the Night ceremonies. We gathered in solidarity at Feminist Fridays to engage in dialogues of the resistance. During our annual Feminist Festival, we hosted a forum on intersectional feminism and the resistance move-

ment. And we strove to practice intersectional feminism in our daily lives.

Some days, we felt daunted by the rising misogyny unleashed as we witnessed murderous attacks by incels and the pervasiveness of sexual assault. We grew weary when we learned of the introduction of the proposed executive order that became known as the Muslim ban, as the Trump Administration tore undocumented immigrant children away from their families and put them in detention centers, as Trump supported an accused pedophile for the vacant senate seat in Alabama, as he refused to condemn white supremacists in any genuine manner, as he encouraged police brutality, and as he proposed executive orders to erase the existence of transgender persons.

We worried over the intensity of the partisanship and its impact on unstable persons with homicidal tendencies; we witnessed the terror those tendencies could unleash when one deranged man shot and wounded Republican congress members and officers at a baseball practice and another targeted Democratic leaders through mail bombs. Fear hovered always about us as the news covered story after story of the rise of hate crimes alongside Trump’s refusal to fully condemn them and as the reel of mass shootings rolled like repetitive sequels of horror films while the adminis-

tration refused to make any demands for regulating guns. We were devastated after Charlottesville, after Marjory Stoneman Douglas, and after Tree of Life Synagogue.

But we couldn’t give up and fold into our despair. We participated in vigils and kept programming, protesting, and campaigning. Through all the tragedies and travails, we have also experienced great hope as our previous mayor, Mitch Landrieu, took a stand against Confederate symbols; as New Orleans elected its first female mayor, LaToya Cantrell; as the #MeToo Movement burgeoned across America and the world; as we joined the crowds flocking to the second Women’s March all across the nation in 2018; and as a historic number of women ran for office in the midterm elections. And we celebrated as we witness such a great rising of women all around us as they achieve positions of power and begin to reshape our world.

On the night of the midterm election on November 6, 2018, I attended a Black Student Union event held in honor of BSU Day. Students, staff members, professors, and alumni gathered in circles to listen to students discuss the challenges they confront and spoke with them about ways to navigate obstacles. At the close of the meeting, the keynote speaker, Loyola’s Chief Diversity Officer, Dr. Sybol Cook Anderson, led us in a dialogue with the refrain, “It’s later than we thought.” We explored the persistence of racism and how we might increase our actions to combat it. For as she noted, it is long past the time that change was promised; and we must find ways to continue to stand up and share the weight of the struggle collectively.

When I arrived home a little after 9:00 p.m., the newscasters had already begun to declare winners in many of the races.

Though I was disappointed with the losses of some candidates I hoped would win, I watched in awe through the night as news anchors declared one woman after another the victor: Jahana Hayes, Ilhan Omar, Jane Mills, Sylvia Garcia, Chrissy Houlahan, Sharice Davids, Veronica Escobar, Rashida Tlaid. . . With each new name, I celebrated with my colleagues who were posting on Facebook and my students who were texting on our GroupMe. One of my students texted: “So proud of these progressive women winning.” And we all hearted her

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post. I smiled. I felt so proud of them, of their social justice spirits, of their courage, and of their determination to make this country live up to its creed of equality and justice for all.

We also had much to celebrate in our own Loyola community as we witnessed in the fall the great rise to power of women on campus in our administration and student government. A week after the election, on November 16, as Loyola prepared to inaugurate Tania Tetlow as the first woman and first lay person as its 17th president, I marched proudly with my Women’s Studies colleagues in the procession across campus to the Holy Name of Jesus Church.

As we gathered in the pews, I sat between Trimiko Melancon, the chair of the African and African American Studies committee and former chair of Women’s Studies, and Barbara Ewell, one of Loyola’s greatest champions of feminism.

I marveled at the many women speaking, SGA President Sierra Ambrose, renowned journalist Cokie Roberts, Staff Senate Chair Cathy Gross, President of the Loyola Alumni Association Leigh Thorpe, and Mayor LaToya Cantrell and so too the many men who spoke in great praise and respect for Tetlow. I stole glances at Barbara, her face beaming as bright as ever. I wondered if she had ever imagined when she and women like Connie Mui,

by a woman. When Tetlow took the oath of office as Loyola’s president, Barbara grabbed my hand and raised it in the air. I felt the struggle of the feminist movement and all that Barbara had fought to achieve at Loyola and beyond surge through her, through the church, and through me.

Loyola feminists from all generations deepens my faith in America, for they reflect feminist communities across our country. Sure, we have conflicts; we make mistakes; we clash over methods, policies, and leaders. Thoughtful disagreement within the context of a common devotion to intersectional, intergenerational, and inclusive feminism is essential to creating a nation that is truly for the people. We understand that to move America toward its creed of justice, liberty, and equality, women of all demographics must rise into positions of power and share that power with diverse men and persons of all genders; we must create a power structure that reflects the people of America in all our wondrous diversity.

Feminists work daily to contribute to this change. I know that this fourth wave has only just begun, that we have much to fight for in the years and days ahead. But this I know too: feminists have only grown stronger in the ashes of every misogynist firestorm.

Like phoenixes, from the ashes, we rise.

Nancy Fix Anderson, and Catherine Wessinger struggled to establish the Women’s Studies program and the Women’s Resource Center that Loyola would be run

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Watchwords

Watchwords: Intersectionality

T

By Emmaline Bouchillon and Carrie Elizabeth Smith

he idea of intersectionality isn’t new. The word has been dancing on the tips of tongues for years, but the concept has been present and all too real for those affected. Harriet Tubman once said, “In my mind, I see a line. And over that line, I see green fields and lovely flowers and beautiful white women with their arms stretched out to me over that line, but I can’t seem to get there no-how. I can’t seem to get over that line.” Tubman speaks life into the reality of racism inflicted on women of color in the 1800s. In 2015, Viola Davis was the first black woman to win an Emmy in history, and in her acceptance speech, she recited Tubman’s words. She explained that the only thing separating black women from white women was opportunity. Between Tubman and Davis’ life a lot has changed, but a lot hasn’t.

against them, the odds are ever not in their favor. Though society has become arguably more tolerant, at the overlap of oppressed groups lies those who have been shut down and ignored. This phenomena doesn’t only affect women of color, it’s something that weighs on many different people across the spectrum of existence. The best way to understand this monstrous idea is through the word intersectionality.

As Tubman and Davis pointed out, women of color face more obstacles. They have been disproportionately affected by both racism and sexism. With two tallies

Crenshaw used the term to analyze a case in which black women plaintiffs argued that they suffered discrimination in the General Motors workforce precisely

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Intersectionality is the overlapping of social identities such as race, sexual orientation, gender identity, etc and oppressive institutions such as racism, homophobia, ableism, sexism, etc. The concept had been around for centuries, but lawyer and critical race and feminist theorist, Kimberlé Crenshaw coined the term intersectionality in the 1980s to help explain the phenomenon.

because of their intersecting identities as women and as African Americans. The court rejected their argument, claiming they had to either show gender or racial discrimination, not both. However, that proved impossible because white women and black men did not face discrimination at General Motors as black women did.

Despite laws intended to prevent racial and gender discrimination, those who are discriminated against for both fall through the cracks of the legal system. Women of color aren’t being discriminated against solely for their race or their gender, they’re being discriminated against for their race and gender. The understanding of and types of discrimination often escapes those who haven’t been impacted by it.

It’s important to note that intersectionality is not exclusive to black women; it reaches across all avenues and demands social justice for everyone. Realizing the scope and importance of the issue at hand, Crenshaw did not let the negative result of the GM case deter her from demanding

change. By finally labeling the theory, it moved it from the abstract to the tangible.

It made the suffering caused understandable, concrete, and legitimate to those who doubted its existence. No one could any longer doubt the impact of this kind of discrimination when it was laid out and explained. Finally, people could spot the

problem and find a solution. By coining the term intersectionality, Crenshaw inspired a variety of social justice movements, including the feminist movement, to not only believe in inclusivity but to actually act upon it.

Today, intersectionality is most often paired with the word feminism.

Intersectional feminism is, of course, advocating for equality between the sexes, but it also advocates for all people who have overlapping identities which affect the way in which they experience oppression. After the Women’s March

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Watchwords

on Washington in 2017, intersectional feminism gained tremendous attention.

The phrase “we believe gender justice is racial justice, is economic justice” became a rallying chant of the movement.

With intersectional feminism, women are challenging the patriarchy and reclaiming feminism by continuing to speak out and advocate for all people; in the past, feminism gained various negative stigmas.

Sexists like Rush Limbaugh and others tried to portray feminists as man-hating radicals. Consequently, it made quite a few folks afraid of identifying as feminists.

In the modern era, as we move into fourth wave feminism, feminists are fighting back. Our lives within the confines of the patriarchal society has been called out, and change comes by resisting the way the world participates in it. To defy the patriarchy, it is crucial to understand what patriarchy means. In a path breaking book published in 1997, The Gender Knot, Allen C. Johnson defined patriarchy as a society that encourages male privilege by being male-dominated, male-centered, and male-identified. Patriarchy also includes male obsession with the control and oppression of women. This statement is not to suggest that all men are cruel or malevolent toward women; it is simply how society as a whole has trained most

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minds to view men as more authoritative and superior than women.

of whether or not we have personally experienced their form of discrimination. One of the most important steps society can Understanding the patriarchy is important take toward becoming more intersectional to understand intersectionality because the is by actually showing up and rallying patriarchy is what leads to groups being with others through protests, standing up oppressed, which leads to overlaps in opfor others, and fearlessly calling out oppressed identities, which leads to intersec- pression. In order to create lasting change, tionality. Patriarchal societies are oppresfeminists must speak against all forms of sive across genders, ethnicities, sexualities, oppression. Intersectional feminism exists etc. Intersectional feminism is a powerful in feminisms roots because it demands way to combat the patriarchy. However, gender equality for all people. Pioneers intersectional feminism faces its own chal- such as Tubman in the 1800s and Davis lenges. Often, people believe that labeling in modernity work to call out discriminasomeone by their race, gender, or sexualtion and demand change. Opportunity is ity creates further inequality; however, it key to ending suppression: opportunity is vital that society recognizes the unique to speak, to change, to understand. To characteristics of every individual so that move forward as a society we must all they are not excluded from major politimove together. It’s time we come together, cal and social justice movements. In order celebrate our differences, and share opporto achieve a social system that embraces tunity. Understanding intersectionality is intersectional differences, we must first one step in the right direction, so let’s keep acknowledge the presence of the oppresmarching towards equality. sive system we live in and its impact. Only then can we rid society of those systems in order to achieve equality for all.

Each individual has the potential to understand the privilege they have and how they can help others in their fight for freedom, which is why intersectionality is so important. We must also seek other perspectives and show compassion for others regardless

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Movement

Movement:

Faces of Fourth W

Answers as to why Loyola University New Orlean 12

Wave Feminism

ns students say they are feminist

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Movement

Question: WHY ARE YOU A FEMINIST? "Females are an under appreciated population and I feel its my duty to advocate for those who need it. Girls Run The World. A female gave birth to Jesus! Nothing can top that!" ~Neicy Harrison

"Because we're all the same on the inside!" ~ Bella Wallace

"#cuzgirlzrock <3 <3" ~Alexis Caillet

"Because I don't have to hate men to love equality and safety <3 :)" ~Kelsey Billiot

"TO RELEASE OUR SOULS AND BODIES FROM THE CHAINS OF THE PATRIARCHY AND IMPERIALSIM." ~ Richard De Schweinitz

"The Future is FEMALE <3" ~ Margot Parilli

Responses collecte 14

"Because I want to be Rich, hard to do with less pay :(" ~Thayer Tymon "Because I came from a woman YA DUMMY!" ~Mike Natale "Because intersectionality matters!

- Anybody can be a feminist regardless of gender, race, or background.

- Feminism is for everybody!

- Being inclusive matters." ~Brailey Penny

"I am a woman not a form of entertainment!" ~ Mollie Bush

"To inspire the highest type of womanhood!" ~ Kamy Alexander "Because women are amazing and we deserve equal rights." ~ Alexandra Piovanetti

ed from Loyola University New Orleans Students.

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Perspectives

Buisness Blurb

With Bukle

by Hadori Bukle

A

s I step into my fourth and a career and parenthood. A mother should final year as a College of Busi- expect her partner to put an equal effort ness undergraduate student, into parenting while a business woman I take with me all of the can work her way through the “jungle knowledge, skills, and abilities gym” to gain a leadership position. As a I have accumulated over the course of my young woman, who dreams of becoming college career. Tips on how to behave in a an executive of a company and a mother professional manner and how to conduct one day, I was intrigued by her words. myself in ethical situations run through my Why would I not be intrigued? Sandberg is mind as I prepare myself for my journey a Harvard Business School graduate with into the corporate workforce shortly after an impressive résumé that extends from college. Before immersing myself into a serving as chief of staff for U.S Treasury new work life, I was able to get a glimpse Secretary Lawrence Summers to working this past summer while participating in as a Vice President at Google. She has the an internship. My eyes opened to a world experience that many women desire, inI had never seen before with numerous cluding myself, so I continued in hopes to conference rooms and meetings with gather more information about navigating senior managers. During this internship the male-dominated corporate life. experience, I constantly repeated to myself all of the different tips and tricks of profes- Breaking gender stereotypes that discoursionalism. I quickly noticed that no matter age women from being ambitious proves how much college has taught me about the a central theme of the book. Sandberg workplace, it could not prepare me for beexplores how often she was condemned for ing a black woman in the workplace. After being bossy or domineering as a child and the internship, I was recommended the #1 a young woman when she was simply trynational bestseller, Lean In: Women, Work, ing to assert herself. In the chapter, “The and the Will to Lead (Alfred A. Knopf Leadership Gap: What Would You Do If 2013) by Sheryl Sandberg. Having heard You Weren’t Afraid,” she shares stories of fairly good reviews on the Facebook COO’s women who have sought to break this stemotivating book, I was excited to read all reotype and dare to be ambitious. Women of the interesting ways she recommends must also demand salaries equivalent of women to approach the workforce. their merit and their male counterparts.

In the chapter “Success and Likeability,” Sandberg makes her ultimate point clear Sandberg explains that when Facebook in the introduction of the book by emCEO, Mark Zuckerberg, first offered her phasizing that all women should “lean the position of COO, she wanted to accept in” by accomplishing any goals that they it immediately. However, her brother-inmay have without the fear of gender biases. law encouraged her to negotiate. Surely Ambition can drive women to become a man would. Sandberg did her research confident and encouraged to reach for and met with Zuckerberg to negotiate; she more. The author stresses that it does not also explained that if he wanted a tough matter if a woman would like to be a stay- negotiator for a COO, he should respect at-home mother, a business woman, or be- that she would negotiate her own salary. come a combination of both by balancing It worked. She obtained the salary she

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wanted. Even though women are perceived as “demanding” when negotiating, Sandberg did not let that fear get in the way of her success.

The Harvard graduate touches on other issues women confront, such as expressing their opinions, balancing a family and career, and accepting that women and men both have their limits and cannot do everything. In the chapter “Working Together Towards Equality,” she inspires women from different demographics to work together by raising each other up, no matter if they are stay-at-home mothers or powerful business women. Sandberg asserts that this cannot happen unless a majority of women “lean in.”

"Lean In: Women, Work, and the Will to Lead" has helped motivate me to lean in as I prepare to enter the workforce after college. Leaning in means cultivating the confidence to resist succumbing to gender stereotypes; it means daring to act assertively; it means negotiating salaries to reflect my merit; it means never apologizing for wanting a career; it means expecting my partner to share in parenting should I have a family; it means supporting female colleagues in resisting the discrimination they face; it means being as ambitious as I want and pursuing my dreams with every ounce of my being.

TransTalks

Finding You

by Leo Thomas

R

ecognizing who you truly are is a huge part of college, and itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s a slow process of unveiling and revolution. I spent all of high school stuck in an illusion; trapped as the person others wanted me to be, not being true to myself. A short list of people knew everything. A longer list knew chunks of the truth, although nearly everyone knew a name. A name that helped me pretend people properly gendered me. This name was my safety net.

Many people experience this throughout their time in high school, and it's very draining. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s entirely fake.

Throughout high school, I let myself get misgendered constantly because I knew the pain and drama from being publicaly out at school would result in my parents finding out. The torture of four years of lies was more reasonable to me than letting my family know and risk getting kicked out of my house.

I personally am not a huge stickler for my people respecting my pronouns.

If you're either new to the idea of people accepting who you are or you yourself are

I realize this is a common experience for many trans folks in our university and worldwide. Knowing that there are people here that care enough to put forth effort to make you as comfortable as possible is like a refreshing glass of water.

just finding out who you are, know that there are people on campus who will do their best to make any adjustment needed so you can feel safe and comfortable in your home here at Loyola. And if you aren't positive about these feelings you have, be it sexual orientation or gender identity, there are plenty of resources here for you. You can find a safe place to confide in with the Women's Resource Center, talk with University Counseling, or even join Plus+, the local LGBTQIA+ group on campus.

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Perspectives

HERSTORY: A Feminist Book Club

By Tess Rowland

K

eep Marching: How Every Woman Can Take Action and Change Our World (Hachette Books, 2018) by Kristin Rowe-Finkbeiner provides a crash course on why we still need feminism and serves as a practical guide on how to confront and dismantle gender barriers. Rowe-Finkbeiner is the executive director of MomsRising, a grassroots organization of moms and their allies, founded to obtain economic security for moms and their families. She was also a keynote speaker at the 2017 Women's March in Washington, D.C.

concrete action plans to motivate women to demand equal wages, obtain better social standing, and gain a stronger political voice. She provides useful tactics, solutions, and strategies that any woman can practice to build her power. In addition, she beseeches women to improve the lives of other women in their community. Keep Marching is a call to action to all strong women to come together and rise up to the challenges and change the world for all women.

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1. How do we promote

feminism and intersectionality in our community?

2. How do we encourage more

women to run for office in our community?

3. How can women take

Rowe-Finkbeiner divides the book into three main themes: “Our Money,” “Our Bodies,” and “Our Communities” and explores obstacles women confront, such as glass ceilings, gender violence, costly healthcare, and discriminatory laws.

Some glaring statistics include that 1 in 3 women have been sexually assaulted in America and that America has still failed to provide family medical leave even though 177 other nations do. She weaves the statistics into moving anecdotal evidence by sharing powerful stories of women struggling in America.

Keep Marching is more than an analysis of the problems; it offers solutions. RoweFinkbeiner pairs statistics and stories with

Discussion Questions

action against the so-called “maternal wall”?

4. How do we call out sexism

and racism in places of work?

5. How do we get our voices

Tess Rowland

as women to be heard; what were some of the ideas the book suggested?

Broads Abroad HALLO!

H

allo! You may be asking yourself, “Wait, did I read that right? Did she mean to put that a instead of an e? Did she not proofread before she submitted this article?” Yes, I did proofread this article and yes I did that on purpose. That’s how you say “Hello” in Dutch! To be fair, It’s not much different than its English counterpart. In fact, much of the Dutch language is not too far off from English, however, a big chunk of it is. But what am I talking about? I’m not here to compare and contrast Germanic languages! I’m here to discuss my experience being a woman here in Amsterdam.

I not only identify as a woman, but I also experience the world as a woman of color and my accounts would not be complete if I didn’t acknowledge that dimension of my identity (*cough cough* Intersectionality 101 people!). When I first started writing this article, I realized I couldn’t start typing willy nilly about my experience because... well I didn’t have any yet. I was, fresh off the press! I had just arrived in Amsterdam and could barely figure out how to ride my bike 15 minutes from point A to point B without getting lost, let alone dissect my own multi-dimensional experiences without said experience to draw from. I needed to give myself some time to really get acclimated with everything and build my so called “repertoire” of experience and I think I’ve done a swell job at gathering a couple up and coming to a decent conclusion so without further ado, let’s get into it!

Also I’d like to make it clear that these are my personal experiences and my thoughts

POC from across the room and almost instinctively link up because you know y’all gotta “stick together”, as they say. As W i a l i l r i a o t m time went on, and I was getting established s V ic in my classes, I realized that I was one of two black women in one of my classes and the only black woman in my other class!

Talk about change! While I am one of the few black people in my classes, I don’t find myself being treated any different inside the classroom. Strangely enough, I find this to be a sort of advantage for me because I am able to contribute some insight to sociological topics via my experience as an African-American woman, so it’s not so bad! As far as what it’s like being a woman in Amsterdam, I’d say it’s a slightly different experience, but not totally unfamiliar. One memory that sticks out to me is one where I was leaving central station and happened to see a woman publicly breastfeeding her child. I rarely, if ever, see on them; they don’t speak for everyone’s experience, and I certainly don’t claim to be that happen in the states, let alone in such 100% correct in my interpretations of these a busy place like central station. That little moment spoke volumes to me about the experiences. So if by the end of this brief autonomy that is given to women in Dutch article you feel inclined to hit me up and tell me how wrong I am, I’d rather you take society. it up with HR and tell Sherry that Victoria sent you. Just kidding, I don’t even know a As a woman, I feel a bit more respected here, BUT only to a certain degree. Let’s Sherry! (But you get my drift.) take the attention I get for example. For I guess I should start with why I chose the those who don’t know me, I’m six feet tall so I am not at all a stranger to being a Netherlands as my country of study. I’ll give you two honest answers: a superficial source of attention, however I (and many others) are victims of a particular type one and a not-so-superficial one. My superficial answer is that Amsterdam seemed of unwanted attention that I could really like another New Orleans, just bigger; rich do without. In the states, it isn’t uncommon for me to get whistled at, catcalled, history and tolerant culture coupled with blatantly stared at for long periods of time, an equally magical nightlife. I expected beautiful architecture, canals as far as the touched/grabbed, followed, asked for sex, etc., and in my experience, it’s usually men eye can see, and evidence of last night’s that are doing it. I still experience that charades riddled in the streets. My nothere, although not to the same frequency. so-superficial answer actually ties in with the former. Because I love New Orleans so This is quite annoying as one could imagmuch, I wanted to go somewhere that was ine because I was under the impression different geographically and culturally, but that I was going to escape all that once still resembled home in terms of tolerance, I got here, but alas, I have not! When I have experienced that specific unwanted beauty, and the “Laissez les bons temps attention I mentioned above, I fully believe rouler” attitude. that my race was partially the reason why it happened to the degree that it did. I’m Being a person of color in New Orleans is seen as something “exotic,” and as much as hardly a thought; I never felt out of place!

I despise that descriptor and prefer not to Yes I was aware of my race, but it was never a source of spatial insecurity. That is be associated with it, it doesn’t stop people from approaching me and treating me as definitely not the case now. I don’t think such. Being perceived in such a way leads I’ve ever been more aware of my blackness. It hit me immediately! How, you may some to believe that I am inherently more predisposed to being sexual and erotic so ask? Because of a particular phenomena they project their own sexual agenda onto that I think POC know all too well. It’s poor unassuming Victoria in an attempt to that thing where you lock eyes with other

19

Perspectives

actualize whatever dream scenario they’ve made up in their minds. Tragic, isn’t it?

Outside of a sexual implication, staring is a big thing, but everyone does it, and people rarely say anything to me; and on the bright side, I’ve experienced men here giving more sincere compliments and going about their day as opposed to just saying something sexually charged disguised as a compliment in hopes of getting some skin from me.

This was just a brief little look into my world away from home! Wasn’t so much of a wild ride, was it? I have a lot more time to rack up some more experiences and dissect those too, but for now I’m just gonna live it up here in Amsterdam and try not to let the creeps get me down. I suggest you do the same. Later lovelies!

20

Music & the Movement Rock The Vote!

By Carolyne Shofne

Did you exercise your right to vote in this past November elections?

Whether your answer is yes or absolutely, I have the right playlist to get you excited about our civic duties. Listen to this rocking playlist while driving or any time you feel the need to get pumped for the next elections! From Janelle Monae to Tracy Chapman to Sleater-Kinney, we have a vibrant mix of music for your past and future voting enjoyment.

Keep rockin’ the votes!

1

The Times They Are A Changin’ Bob Dylan

6

#1 Must Have Sleater-Kinney

2

Hands Up Blood Orange

7

Paper Planes MIA

3

Glory (From The Motion Picture Selma) Common, John Legend

8

I Got The Juice (feat. Pharrell Williams) Janelle Monae

4

Nina Cried Power Hozier

9

This Is America Childish Gambino

5

Berkeley’s On Fire SWMRS

Bout A Revolution 10 Talkin’ Tracy Chapman

21

Perspectives

Standing in Solidarity:

Janet Mock

T

hirty-four-year-old civil rights and transgender activist, author, media star, and feminist icon has refused to be silenced. From commencement speeches to appearances and conversations on The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, Entertainment Tonight, and other shows and segments dedicated to discussing political commentary and current events, Janet Mock has been making herself visible on all fronts in order to effectively voice her opinions and concerns for LGBTQIA+ members and women of color. Mock also made a public demand for inclusivity during her keynote speech given at the 2017 Women’s March on Washington. In her speech, she reaches out to marginalized groups calling for a time of solidarity in order to collectively bring about change.

Mock has been asserting her voice to a society which has silenced her in the past.

Mock has been using her platform as a media star in order to speak her mind on matters that are of great concern now more than ever in a world where many individual who identity as LGBTQIA+ struggle to find a safe space within society. Through doing so, Mock has created a collective group of people who are empowered by

22

her words and her innate strength as a strong transgender woman of color. Mock, a woman of many talents, proves to be asserting her voice in only the best of ways for the transgender community in a trying time of uncertainty and fear under Trump’s regime and a world of senseless LGBTQIA+ violence.

hearts of fellow young trans people who are growing up, like her at one point, in a place of fear and uncertainty.

Mock proves unstoppable in projecting her story to all media forms, as she was featured on Blood Orange’s latest album, "Negro Swan", in addition to starring in the music video for the song Mock discusses issues of importance to her Jewelry. Mock speaks on the invalidity and concerns she shares in her debut and she felt growing up in the song Dagenham best selling book Redefining Realness: My Dream’s Outro: Path to Womanhood, Identity, Love, & So Much More (Artia Books 2014) and in her I was always hyper aware of latest book, Surpassing Certainty (Artia the things that the people Books 2017). Mock has been widely featured in magazines such as Marie Claire, around me who were charged Mock expresses her immense pride in her with my care or told me, like, identity, an identity in which she had to overcome trials and tribulations. She debe silent or be quiet, or be tails her journey in the fascinating stories ashamed or hide, or perform from her past. Mock has also branched out of the realm of writing to showcase her ar- a version of myself that wasn't tistic talent in writing Pose, a show which really me...I've always been creates a space for transgender persons that hyperconscious and aware normally is not portrayed in American television or American media. In making of not going into spaces and transgender women and men more visible seeking too much attention...I to the public eye, Mock attempts to ignite think that so often in society acceptance and feelings of validity in the

"

Janet Mock - Wikimedia Commons - Author: Juston Smith

in order to belong means that we have to, like, shrink parts of ourselves.

"

Through voicing her feelings and personal struggle with personal acceptance, Mock is able to help validate those who may be growing up, like herself, in a place of fear without anyone to console her or without a safe space to call home.

Through a thought-provoking message, she voices over a tantalizing jazz sound, she defines what a family is to her:

asked me what family is. " You And I think of family as com-

munity. I think of the spaces where you don't have to shrink yourself, where you don't have to pretend or to perform. You can fully show up and be vulnerable, and in silence, completely empty and that's completely enough...You show up, as you are, without judgment,

without ridicule. Without fear or violence, or policing, or containment....We get to make ourselves. And we get to make our families.

"

In addition to creating a family, Mock inspires all individuals struggling to find their identity and their voice to feel less alone during such a trying time.

Mock seeks to remain the voice of empowerment and demand for change for those too afraid to speak up themselves.

Mockâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s efforts and successes in building a strong and empowered community are endless, and she proves this through her relentless devotion for encouraging individualsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; identity and voice and creating a space where these voices are not only heard, but respected. Mock manages to inspire the LGBTQIA+ community and allies as she travels the country speaking to groups sharing her personal story and inspiration. More information on Mockâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s speaking events, podcasts, and other general information can be found at www.janetmock.com

Skye Johnson 23

Perspectives

"DONNIE DARKO" AND WOMEN IN FILM

I

Delaney Harper

f you want to know what our country thinks of women, watch a movie. It’s like that old saying: “Life imitates art.” Since women make up over half the population, there is no way to avoid them. You’d think that 51.9% of over 7 billion people would lend themselves to a variety of characters, complexities, and motivations, but you’d be wrong. Films sprinkle in women for some zest, but overall they’re like basil: decoration with no real taste. Their purpose is to provide what the (usually male) protagonist needs. This is not to say we don’t need films with male protagonists who have women in their lives, but the problem is that these women don’t seem to have interior lives. They are shells. They’re the Stepford Wives who are booted on and off only when he requires it, and other than that, they don’t exist. As an audience, we are forced to search for deviations of this template. Some films promise fruitful searches but end up like all the rest. Others, however, don’t make promises at all. "Donnie Darko" is one of these films. It has loud and clear deviations from the norm, albeit unexpected. For all the groundwork that has been laid by proceeding science fiction flicks, it stands alone in its portrayal of women.

24

"Donnie Darko" is not a “feminist film,” nor is it a pioneer in the industry. It revolves around Donnie, a white teenage boy who begins to see a 6’0 bunny rabbit named Frank. Frank tells him he must save the world just as a rogue jet engine plummets through his bedroom. Donnie thinks he is indebted to Frank for saving his life; thus, he does whatever Frank tells him to do even though the actions gradually intensify. As Donnie’s journey unfolds, the people around him, his mother Rose in particular, pick up the pieces. By focusing on the mother Rose, "Donnie Darko" begins to diverge from the standard, thereby obliterating the predetermined roles of women in film.

lieves he can win her over if he completes a mission, because every woman can be won over once a man proves his masculinity—it’s just that easy. Finally, there’s the villainess. This is the category mothers in film typically fall under. Typically, this category denotes the femme fatale stereotype, but in a more mundane setting, she is the “ball-buster,” the shrill traffic patrol that must be avoided at all cost. None of these female traits seem to stem from motivation or fear.

Donnie condemns his mother to the villianness role; within the first ten minutes of the film, Donnie calls her a bitch after a confrontation about Donnie’s medication.

Normally, we would only see the side of When women are given significant screen Rose that Donnie shrugs off as a shrill hintime, they usually fall into at least one drance, but the scene does not end there. of three categories: the arm piece, the We watch as Rose lingers in the hallway crutch, or the villainess. The arm piece is outside of his door. She is not portrayed the traditional mold of a useless, beautiful as irrational or emotional; she rubs her woman who only exists so long as her male fingers together as she weighs her choices counterpart exists. This category often tilts of action. She chooses to keep walking towards the crutch; the object he can no until she reaches the bedside where her longer possess. She is rarely shown to have husband Eddie reclines reading a book. a life outside of the protagonist, so her mo- Rose tells him, seeking action. In its place, tives are nonexistent. She’s probably used Eddie gives her validation. By sharing this as an excuse to mope or justify the male moment between them, the audience sees protagonists’ view on women, becoming Rose’s frustration and her utter isolation the motivation for the character. He bewhen it comes to fixing problems instead

of ignoring them. She makes judgement calls, and we can appreciate the urgency behind these judgements as Donnie spirals. When she makes decisions we may not agree with, we still see her as human, not as someone who makes her child take medication.

When Rose runs out of options, she seeks out Donnie’s psychiatrist. Rose and Eddie sit on the overstuffed couch in the office.

Rose is straight-backed and articulate, while Eddie adopts a poor imitation of his wife’s poise. Dr. Thurman takes a deep breath to elaborate on what she sees as Donnie’s condition just as the scene intercuts to Donnie glaring over his shoulder in the bathroom mirror. The parents stare blankly as the words “hallucination” and “paranoid schizophrenic” stack on top of each other, building to an inevitable explosion. Donnie stabs at Frank with a butcher knife, looking every bit as crazy as the psychiatric jargon implies. The heart of this scene rests on Rose’s reaction to the realization that she can never do enough for Donnie, and she must instead hand her son over to a doctor. Ko Lyn Cheang points out in her "Yale Daily News" article that Rose’s psyche is represented through a visual metaphor of a wave crashing into itself, as if we see the serenity and predictability of an ocean that Rose tries to cling to. Meanwhile, Donnie keeps prodding with his butcher’s knife, as if he is chipping away at her composure remotely. With tight close-ups and restrained dialogue, we feel her terror as she understands her impotence. The impact of Donnie’s choices are harsher when the audience sees the great turmoil of the woman who loves him unconditionally.

face crumples as she strokes his cheek.

If there had been any doubt about Rose’s devotion to her son, this scene obliterated it. Even when women in film are typically portrayed as erratic and unrealistically consistent, such tenderness is rare.

Usually it’s canned and too wordy. But the simple composition of Donnie and Rose--a woman Donnie frequently disregards as shrill or hysterical--puts them on equal ground. They both have no idea what will happen or why they’re terrified. They’re both painfully human, and the thought of losing either of them feels like losing someone you’ve known your whole life.

supposed to. Instead of seeing the bitchy shrew, we see the desperately loving mother. As in Donnie Darko, we might not like or agree with Rose’s decisions, but we are given the opportunity to try and understand why she made them. We may even feel validated if we make the same choices; we can believe that real women don’t have to please everyone. Representation on screen has proven to be a social movement in and of itself. It gives way to emulation, and there is strength in numbers. In a country that denies women strength, we need all the women we can get.

As the final act plays out and we see the beginning of the end of the world, it’s easy to forget about tenderness. It is touched on briefly when we realize that Donnie’s actions will end up saving his mother, and it is reiterated in the final scene.

The two women closest to Donnie, Gretchen (his girlfriend) and Rose, stare at each other at opposite ends of the street.

They are puppets of déjà vu. Rose faces tragedy and barely clings to her aforementioned poise. Her solution to the problem is to smoke. There is nothing else to do.

Gretchen feels like she ought to look the same. The two women don’t share any words, and there is barely any sound to the scene. All they can muster is a wave.

When films focus on uncategorized women, we can not only experience the movie as we’re supposed to, but we can also experience other people as we’re

That love is shown in its endlessness when Rose must leave Donnie. Call it woman’s intuition or existential dread, but as the story bubbles to its climax, Rose seems acutely aware of impending doom as she sits beside him to tell him she has to go.

She looks at him intensely and desperately; Donnie has shriveled as the time to save the world runs out. All she can do is will him to speak. The quiet affection is a stark contrast to the falling-dominoes plot, but it solidifies the sacrifices both of them have had to make. He asks her, looking defeated and indifferent, “How does it feel to have a wacko for a son?” There’s a silence. Rose smiles sadly. She tells him it feels wonderful. Donnie looks taken aback, and his

25

Perspectives

FEMINIST FITS

Photographed by Lauryn Langford

26

Feminist Fits

Feminism, Machista Culture, and the Influences of Social Media

By Lauryn Langford

O

n college campuses where many students opt for hoodies and shorts as their everyday wear, others prefer to dress up. I took notice of Anneliese Gonzalez’s style one day during class. It was 9:30 a.m., and she waltzed into class wearing a cropped lilac colored sweater and high-waist distressed denim jeans, accessorized with teardrop pendant earrings and a signature red lip.

I was intrigued and wanted to know what influenced her colorful style.

Gonzalez, a native of Nicaragua, relocated to New Orleans for college. “When I was younger the people where I grew up wore stuff like Abercrombie. I wanted to be cool and fit in, but I didn’t want to wear that because I didn’t like it,” she said. Gonzalez prefers to pay homage to her ‘patria’ in her own way. She makes reference of the bodysuit she is wearing that is conveniently from Nicaragua and says ‘ALOH/A.’ Gonzalez, who identifies as a feminist, admits struggling with the ‘machista’ culture of Latin America while growing up.

“I’ve been criticized for my style whether it’s by my boyfriend or my mother, but not caring about what people think defines the

way that I stand up for myself...Feminism to me is being identified as a human being, just as a man would. Not above, not below, but equal.”

As for key pieces in her wardrobe, Gonzalez expresses her love for heels.

“Heels make me feel like I can conquer the world.” Often when we see people wearing heels in casual settings, we roll our eyes at them. Gonzalez acknowledges this sentiment. “Some people think you’re trying hard to be sexy, but they make me feel taller and more elegant. I feel empowered.”

In this current age of fashion bloggers and ‘influencers,’ Gonzalez, as many other young people do, credits social media as a source of style inspiration. “I don’t think that anyone should copy anyone else’s style, but it’s cool to get inspiration.”

Gonzalez cites Instagram influencers as girlbosses. “They run their own businesses and they’re influencing the world.

Instagram is a platform that men aren’t as connected to.” Chiara Ferragni, Camila

Coelho and Aimee Song of @songofstyle, who together have an impressive 28 million following, are some of Gonzalez’s favorite influencers.

It is no secret that the way we dress influences the way others perceive us, but personal style is the ultimate form of self-expression. “I have a love for fashion because it makes me feel good,” expresses Gonzalez.

27

Cover Story: Women Rising

Women Rising:

The Trailblazing New Leaders

at Loyola University New Orleans

By Emmaline Bouchillon, Patricia Boyett, Skye Johnson, Tess Rowland

W

e are witnessing the dawning of a new day at Loyola University New Orleans with the rising of Loyola’s trailblazing women leaders.

The journey began in March 2018, when two women, Sierra Ambrose and Joann Cassama, won the presidency and vice presidency of the Student Government Association respectively. In late April, Dr. Maria Calzada, the beloved Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, delighted the Loyola community when she agreed to take on the vacant position of interim provost. And then in May, the glass ceiling at Loyola shattered with the news that Tania Tetlow, a native New Orleanian and the second in command at Tulane University, would become Loyola’s 17th president, the first woman and the first layperson to serve in the position.

Although more women from diverse demographics and men of color are moving into leadership roles in higher education

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across America, whites, particularly white males, still dominate the executive positions. According to the American Council of on Education’s The American College President Study, only 30 percent of college presidents are women, and only 5 percent are women of color. Rick Seltzer’s “Women in Leadership Searches” in Inside Higher Ed (May 2018) found that searches for provost and deans resulted in hiring women 40 percent of the time. Gender gaps also persist in student governing bodies. Jake New’s “Getting Women to Run,” in Inside Higher Ed (November 2014) found that only 40 percent of study body presidents are women, even though more women are attending college than men. According to DeAsia Page’s “Why Are There So Few Black Leaders on College Campuses?” in The Nation (May 31, 2108), a 2017 study found that only 7 percent of college presidents are black women.

Considering such national statistics, this

year Loyola has begun blazing a trail toward greater gender and racial diversity. Loyola’s new women executives are trailblazers, not only because they have assumed the top leadership roles, but because they lead by embracing diversity and inclusiveness with such vigor. The fall semester ushered in a whirlwind of joy and hope as Tetlow, Calzada, Ambrose, and Cassama swept across the campus and beyond, stitching themselves into every fiber of the university, carving out new paths, and reaching out to all of us to delve into the work with them. They lead with a confidence and compassion that stirs hope and determination in the hearts of the Loyola community. They are not afraid of obstacles or hard work or open dialogue.

They guide us to strive collectively toward our university’s mission “to pursue truth, wisdom and virtue; and to work for a more just world.” Journey with us as we explore the ascent of these determined women who call on all of us to rise with them.

“I feel the weight of the hopes and dreams of a whole lot of young women on this campus and of wanting to represent them well. I think a lot of the barriers around gender and race are that people have a subconscious idea of what a certain leader looks like; and once you’re there, and hopefully do well, that idea will shift; but it takes people being the first one to make that happen.”

P

resident Tetlow’s life has prepared her well to lead a Jesuit university and to become the first woman president at Loyola. Tetlow often muses that she “grew up on the Loyola campus.”

As a member of the Ignatius Chapel since the age of 6 and a daughter of a former Jesuit priest, Tetlow spent her formative years immersed in the Loyola community and its Jesuit values. She recalls that

TANIA TETLOW everyone in her family had some connection to Loyola whether graduating from the university, or serving as campus police, a professor, or a dean. Her parents both taught at Loyola, her father, Louis Multry Tetlow, as a psychology professor and her mother, Elisabeth Meier Tetlow, as a religious studies professor before she earned her law degree at the university. In addition, her uncle, the Reverend Joseph

Tetlow, S.J., served as Dean of the Colleges of Arts and Sciences; and her grandfather, Joe Tetlow, was inducted into the Loyola Hall of Fame for football and track. Her deep ties to the school have ingrained in her the importance of the Jesuit mission.

Tetlow found her place in the mission by fighting for gender and racial equality.

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Cover Story: Women Rising

you when I grow up. Could I please meet you?” To Tetlow’s surprise, Boggs set up a meeting with her, which eventually led to an an internship in Washington D.C. During that summer internship, Boggs transformed from Tetlow’s idol to her mentor. Tetlow signed up for the women’s organizations that Boggs recommended, including the League of Women Voters; she worked hard at every task and clung to every conversation.

Louis Multry Tetlow The Jesuits inculcated such ideals in Tetlow, but it was Congresswoman Lindy Boggs, who taught Tetlow to cultivate those values and make them her own. As a child and young girl, Tetlow followed Boggs’s career with great admiration.

Boggs was elected to Congress in 1973 after her husband Haley died in office. Boggs served for eighteen years, fighting tirelessly for racial justice. Besides being the first female congresswoman in Louisiana, Boggs also served as the first female chair of the 1976 Democratic National Convention. Boggs pushed to revamp laws to help women and used her leadership position on boards and as chair to do the same.

Congresswoman Lindy Boggs Tetlow reflects in an essay she authored, “Lindy and Me,” in Tulane Magazine (Fall 2012), “For as long as I can remember, I have wanted to be Lindy Boggs, the most famous of Newcomb’s graduates. . . . [She was] a powerful politician of unquestionable integrity and famed charm. Along with every other sensible girl in New Orleans, I worshipped her.” Finally, Tetlow took a chance and wrote a letter to Boggs: “Dear Congresswoman, I would like to be

30

When Boggs retired from Congress and came to work at Tulane University as counsel to the president, where Tetlow was pursuing a degree in American Studies, Tetlow secured a job as the only staff member in Boggs’s office. Tetlow savored the experience as she learned both from Boggs’s example and her wonderful stories of navigating gender barriers. Boggs shaped Tetlow’s ideals and skills immensely; she pushed her to work harder, to seek social justice, and to run for office. When Tetlow noted that running for office would be difficult, Boggs responded, “I know darling, but somebody has to do it.”

Tetlow paved her own powerful struggle for social justice. Determined to make the world a more just place, she pursued a career in law. After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1995, she clerked for Judge James Dennis, United States Fifth Circuit Court of Appeal. During the latter part of the 1990s, she worked for several years as an associate at Phelps Dunbar and as an adjunct law professor at Loyola Law School New Orleans. At the turn of the 21st century, she accepted a position in the US Attorney’s office as federal prosecutor and served as the Violence Against Women Act coordinator. Along the way, she confronted obstacles because of her gender, but she learned how to turn such obstacles into opportunities. She recalled that as a young lawyer, sometimes people “underestimated her.” She used it to her advantage. For example, while working on “depositions of CEOs, who assumed I was a girl to be patted on the head, [they] told her the most amazing things under oath in ways that were really helpful.”

Eventually, Tetlow gravitated to academia, accepting a faculty position at Tulane Law School where she directed the Domestic Violence Law Clinic for nearly a decade.

She published many articles and several book chapters, including “Criminalizing Private Torture” in the William &

Mary Law Review (May 2016) in which she proposed the passage of a state law that categorized the patterns in intimate partner abuse, including violence, sleep deprivation, sexual abasement, and psychological torment as torture. During these years, Tetlow advised law clinics and governments in Egypt, Rwanda, and Iran.

This work clearly left an indelible impression upon her as she climbed the ladder into a variety of administrative positions at Tulane, including assistant provost of international affairs and chief of staff and senior vice president.

Tetlow never shied away from her hard work or from the challenges that she confronted as a woman in the workforce.

She candidly states that she imagines all women “encounter obstacles within their career because of their gender. And while there will be woman who will tell you otherwise because they don’t want to discourage you, I’m not sure they’re doing young women any favors by misleading them in that regard. . . .” She notes that the obstacles become more obvious when women climb the career ladder. Young people tend not to threaten the status quo and “you can sometimes convince yourself that the world is entirely fair and you have no issues, but they ultimately come. . . . So I think, as a woman, you are constantly walking this tightrope of acceptable ways to present yourself as you can’t seem too passive to fit one stereotype, but you can’t seem to aggressive and fit another, and it gets tiring to constantly think about the filter in which people perceive you.” Tetlow has clearly refused to allow such obstacles and filters to deter her. Nor did she ever shrink from the Jesuit calling of seeking to make the world a better place.

Thus, in March 2015, when Mayor Mitch Landrieu asked Tetlow to serve as Chairwoman of the Sexual Violence and Response Advisory Committee, she accepted the daunting task with hope, determination, and enthusiasm. According to the committee’s 2015 report, Mayor Landrieu

created the task force after “an Inspector General audit identified serious lapses in the quality of sexual assault investigations of five detectives, four in the NOPD Sex Crimes Unit and one in the Child Abuse Unit.” The committee worked closely with NOPD detectives to determine the resources they needed, worked to provide them with such needs, and developed 60 recommendations. Within six months, the committee had completed a third of the recommendations. Some of the most important changes included intense training and the embedding of social workers with the sex crime detectives.

Tetlow’s passion for justice for survivors has never wavered. Since her arrival at Loyola, she has shown her dedication by her tremendous support for Take Back the Night, an annual event in which universities across the city collaborate with community partners to raise awareness of gender violence and to work toward its prevention. During the week of the event, she encouraged the Loyola community to join her for the “crusade to end sexual violence. This is an issue near to my heart and at the core of my convictions.

I have spent much of my career fighting against rape and domestic violence — as a prosecutor, as a lawyer for advocates, in my own academic work and as a university administrator. What has always kept me going is the courage of survivors and the hope that the world is changing because so many of you have demanded it.”

As the opening speaker of Take Back the Night in Loyola’s horseshoe, President Tetlow echoed those sentiments.

She also helped the Take Back the Night

committee include in the program Councilwoman Helena Moreno, who has dedicated much of her career to fighting gender violence. Less than a week later, Tetlow opened the Title IX training of faculty and staff at Loyola by declaring that Title IX is about “opportunity and equality;” that the university’s system must “be fair and just;” that “students have a right not to go to class and sit next to a person who raped them or beat them.” She debunked myths about alcohol turning persons into rapists, stating that rapists rape out of “selfishness and entitlement.” She declared that someone should never blame a rape victim for drinking, “unless you think raping is the punishment for drinking.” And she lambasted the myth that rape “is not that bad.”

Rape, she said, “is an attempt to steal one’s soul.” She reminded the Loyola community that as a Jesuit institution,

“We are here to educate the whole person,” and in so doing, we must “do right by our students.”

President Tetlow demonstrates daily her determination to stand with students and for them and to take a stand against injustice as our mission at Loyola calls on us to do. She reaches out often to faculty and staff to gather our ideas about how to advance our work and Loyola’s mission. She has visited many staff and faculty committees and held listening and working sessions. She accepted an invitation to address the Black Student Union to commemorate Black Student Union Day and spent time speaking with individual students. And after the murderous attacks at Tree of Life Synagogue, she reached out to the Loyola Community with a message, a prayer, and a call to action: “Our hearts hurt. For the dead and the injured and their loved ones. For every Jewish parent who had to find the words this weekend to reveal this horror to their children. For every person who bravely lives their faith even in the face of hatred and violence.” She invoked Charleston, Sutherland Springs, and the recent attacks in Kentucky, and called on us to reach out to those in pain and to stand against injustice. And she acted.

She collected letters written by the Loyola community to deliver to Temple Sinai.

She participated in the vigil organized by Krewe du Jew and Student Life and Ministry and offered words of solidarity and hope and compassion.

It is an exceptional moment to witness the new president of our university give herself so deeply to the community and to walk in the spirit of the Jesuit mission. At the Women’s Resource Center, we marvel as President Tetlow toils daily in all her challenging administrative tasks while also constantly reaching out to students, to faculty, to staff, and to the communities far beyond our campus to show her solidarity with those who suffer, to encourage and empower us all to raise our voices, and to lead us with boldness and compassion.

And it is a magnificent moment to witness

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Cover Story: Women Rising a president of a university state in public arenas with such courage and confidence that she stands for survivors of gender violence; that she will not shrink from ensuring justice; that she is committed to gender equality.

President Tetlow carries well the weight of the hopes and dreams of young girls and women on this campus and beyond and understands the symbolic message her rise to Loyola’s presidency conveys. She hopes that her service as Loyola’s president will “encourage girls her daughter’s age that a university president can look like me. . .”

She also toils to serve and uplift men and persons of all genders at Loyola. It is in those moments, that we see a woman who does not fear that her standing for other women will eclipse her rise nor will it diminish the significance of men or persons of any gender; it is in these moments and so many others, that we know she is here to help us all rise, to lift up Loyola to its greatest heights. And she will do so in the model of the Jesuit mission. For as Tetlow asserts,

“part of the Jesuit mission at its cores is about expanding opportunity and opening doors.”

During the Missioning Mass that began Tetlow’s formal presidential inauguration, Tetlow’s uncle, Rev. Joseph Tetlow., S.J. expressed the gifts society receives when it opens its doors by invoking Galatians 3:28: “In Christ, there is neither Jew nor Greek, slave nor free, male nor female.

We are all one in Christ. Now if we read into the signs of our times, we would add to that . . . there is neither black nor white . . . there is neither straight nor gay; as a matter of fact, there is not even Republican and Democrat.” His message of inclusion conveyed how opening doors has uplifted Loyola. As he concluded: “Each person here brings to this institution the gifts that God Almighty in his wisdom has known in eternity this institution, and this city, and this country needs now. Be the person God Almighty in eternity hopes you will be and you will set the world on fire.”

Tania Tetlow is fully prepared to set the world on fire in the spirit of the Jesuits, for that mission has lived in her since her childhood. And that spirit emanated from her when she rose to the pulpit and said, “To all the Jesuits, whose institution this is and will always remain, I cannot express how humbled I am that you placed your trust in me and how hard I will work to deserve it.” After expressing gratitude to

her family and the Loyola community, she led the Jesuits in a Gregorian chant, the glorious sounds of the 500-year old music echoing with hope and joy across Holy Name of Jesus Church.

The following day, Loyola’s campus was once again alight with hope as the university inaugurated President Tetlow. As faculty and staff gathered in the library and students in Bobet Hall to prepare for the procession, Tetlow and the administration gathered in the rooms of Holy Name of Jesus Church. Tetlow’s husband, daughter, sisters, and mother all gathered with them to witness this momentous event in their family. And the meaning of how this family, the Tetlow family, which had such deep roots in the university and the Church, was gathered to witness one of them rise to the leadership in such a gracious way, seemed to draw Loyola full circle on a significant journey. Our new president was not only a scholar and a leader, but a parent and a spouse too; and that shift to a layperson whose experiences reflected a common experience among many of us brought something new and hopeful to our beloved university.

The speech of renowned journalist Cokie Roberts, daughter of former Congresswoman Lindy Boggs, traced the life of Tetlow from a little girl with powerful dreams and a deep determination to change the world for the better to a woman who achieved a feat once considered impossible. At Tetlow’s birth forty-seven-years ago, no one could have imagined that a woman or a layperson would become the president of Loyola University New Orleans. As Roberts noted, Boggs, the great mentor of Tetlow’s life, had encouraged her to navigate gender obstacles by studying models of women in power, but she also encouraged her to use that power to serve and empower others. Speakers Mayor LaToya Cantrell and President Emeritus of Xavier University Norman C. Francis

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understood the experience and responsibility of being a “first.” President Emeritus Francis was the first African American person to graduate Loyola Law School and the first layperson to serve as president of Xavier University, and Mayor Cantrell became the first women elected mayor in New Orleans its 300 year history in 2018.

They celebrated her achievement.

Both Cantrell, Francis, and so many of the speakers also lauded Tetlow for her lifelong commitment to social justice and to public service. As a prosecutor, as the director of Tulane’s Domestic Violence Law Clinic, and as a scholar, Tetlow fought for survivors and sought to give a voice to the voiceless and empower those rendered powerless. As an administrator, she sought to guide, rather than control, and listened as much as she spoke. President of Tulane University Michael A. Fitts recalled that while Tetlow worked with him as his chief of staff and senior vice president, she celebrated a student protest and rushed out to meet with the students because she genuinely cared about addressing their concerns. And Tetlow’s career also reflects her deep commitment to equal opportunity and diversity. Student Government Association President Sierra Ambrose declared that Tetlow’s career confirmed her belief that with hard work and determination, one could succeed “no matter your gender, race, or creed.”

celebrating her achievements, she praised her family, her friends, and her former mentors and colleagues for cultivating her worldview. And she lauded the Loyola community for its persistent dedication to the university, even through challenging times. She closed by inspiring the Loyola community to rise with her into a new world of hope: “This is the moment to build on our strengths and to flourish, to be true to our mission, to be ambitions.

And this is the moment when the world needs Loyola most: as a driving engine of opportunity, as a force of innovation and change, as the place where justice and creativity come together to make the world a better place. This is our moment.”

President Tetlow has often been asked when she decided she wanted to be a president of a university. She responds that she did not have such an aspiration to be a president of any university: “I wanted to be President of [Loyola]” because it “felt like coming home.” And for many of us in the Loyola community who have immersed ourselves in the mission, who believe so deeply in its values of social justice, and who see those values as deeply embedded in feminism, we feel that with such a president at the helm, we are truly at home now too.

Tetlow’s own speech reflected her commitment to social justice, to public service, and to empowering others. Rather than

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Cover Story: Women Rising “A good leader is a good listener, a good communicator; you have to think through the problems and then explain what you have done and the reason behind your decision.”

MARIA CALZADA

D

r. Calzada has been a beloved person on campus for years; and in late April 2018, many faculty members beseeched her to leave her beloved post as Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences to fulfill the open role of interim provost. Her decision to accept that post lifted the spirits of so many of us at Loyola. She has a reputation as a brilliant mathematician and a phenomenal dean; she is an incredibly hard worker who never complains about the work and who always has a smile and a kind word to say.

Calzada never sought out a career in administration. Rather, her colleagues, who were awed by her grace and brilliance, recruited her again and again; and as she explains, “I have a hard time saying no.”

She has a knack for solving problems in creative ways, one that initially puzzled one of her teachers back in Panama where she was raised. She recalled taking a high school physics course and solving a difficult problem using a different technique than he taught. She came to the same

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answer, but her teacher discouraged her, telling her she’d struggle with math in college.

When she attended Boston College, she pursued a degree in economics. She feared taking a math class because of her experience in high school, yet she had to take calculus for her minor in computer science. That class changed the course of her career. She recalled, “I was hooked by the beauty of this subject, and I fell in love.”

She found herself drawn again and again to math courses and talked about them constantly with her father. Math fascinated her to no end. She realized that her high school physics teacher had been wrong because math should be “creative.” Mathematicians did not have to follow binary techniques. They could find many different ways to the right answer.

Calzada’s love affair with math led her to embrace the concept once declared by Galileo Galilei, that “Mathematics is the

language in which God has written the universe.” While she spoke to us of her love of math, her blue eyes sparkled. “It is almost,” she said, “as if God talks to us through math to solve problems.” She recalled that her enthusiasm for math convinced her father that she should change her major; his suggestion liberated her to embrace math. “There is something,” Calzada mused, “about solving a problem; there are many ways to do it.” After earning her bachelor’s in Economics and Mathematics from Boston College, she earned her master’s and PhD in Mathematics from Tulane University.

In the fall of 1991, Calzada joined the Department of Math at Loyola University New Orleans. In her classes and in her life, she labored to change negative attitudes about math. To her frustration, she has had so many conversations in which new acquaintances found out she was a mathematician and told her how terrible they were at math. She thinks that people have

a mental block about the subject because it is often taught in uncreative ways and because students are often told they are not good at it. She determined to guide her students to see that math is a “creative enterprise where you have to solve problems and find the way the pieces work.” Math, she insisted to us, is central to everyone’s life; it helps people figure out how to save money for their retirement or to pay for a mortgage. And she hoped by sharing the power and beauty of math, she could reach new generations of students and encourage their appreciation, and perhaps even their love for the subject. Thus, she has a particular affinity for freshmen calculus and math models.

Calzada’s own research has shown how central math is to so many fields. In 2008, she received a National Science Foundation to pursue interdisciplinary studies in the Department of Chemistry. She has published dozens of works and specializes both in Spectroscopy and in Mathematical Computations with an Emphasis on Applications in Statistical Quality Control.

Despite her love for research and teaching, her mentors began to guide her toward a career in administration. In 2003, Associate Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences Laurie Joiner encouraged Calzada to take over the First Year Experience; later she worked with her mentor, Dean Joann Cruz on several projects, and when Cruz left Loyola, she recommended Calzada for the position of interim dean. Calzada accepted the job because it was only for a year, and she could return to teaching. She did not expect to like it, but then she found that “it provided a different set of problems, and as a mathematician, you think you can solve problems; it was a really rewarding job.” Calzada served as dean for nearly six years.

In the spring of 2018, Calzada’s colleagues beseeched her to leave her beloved post as dean to assume the open position of interim provost. She agreed to take on the challenge. Calzada has always answered the call to duty at Loyola, and in so doing has constantly uplifted our university. Calzada sees her training in math as influencing her work today in administration; she believes humans can find creative ways to resolve conflicts and difficulties, because sometimes the obvious solution isn’t the best one. She has found her work with Tetlow and Chief of Staff Lesli Harris and the entire cabinet exciting and rewarding.

Calzada, “a good leader is a good listener, a good communicator; you have to think through the problems and then explain what you have done and the reason behind your decision.” She also left us with some advice on how to become a leader that we found so helpful that we wanted to share it with our readers:

Steps to become a leader: 1. Prepare for the job. Study, read, find a mentor.

2. Be a good listener. You need to listen to all sides to understand the problem.

“It is great being part of President Tetlow’s team. . . the other day, we were walking across campus, Lesli, [Tania], and I were walking across campus, and former SGA President Ben Weil saw us and said, ‘Look, it’s the dream team.’ I should definitely walk with Tania more often.”

Calzada’s humility is part of her charm, but she has been a significant force for positive changes at Loyola. Like Tetlow, Calzada considers it vital that the administration seek the knowledge of members of the Loyola community to develop new ideas and to advance the university. In her service as dean and now as interim provost, Calzada extends great efforts to reach out to faculty, staff, and students. She is a ubiquitous sight on campus as she makes a concerted effort to visit committee meetings, to attend programs, and to converse with faculty, staff, and students. Approachable and thoughtful, Calzada welcomes constructive criticism of policies and proposed resolutions and works through problems with the mind of a mathematician and the spirit of a humanitarian.

Through all of Calzada’s experiences, she has toiled to serve as a good leader. To

3. Think, reflect, and discern.

This is Jesuit language. I really find this is the best thing if you think about a problem. I told this to my students in math. You will probably find a solution; it is when you give up, you will not find one.

4. Make informed decisions; this is applicable even if you are not a leader, but in life.

5. Communicate clearly [in both] written and verbal communication.

6. If you make a mistake, own it and try to fix it.

7. Give credit where it is due, and be thankful

8. Repeat!!!!

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Cover Story: Women Rising

SGA

T

he Loyola University New Orleans student body delivered a landmark moment in student governing with the election of and rise to power of an allfemale Student Government Association cabinet led by President Sierra Ambrose and Vice President Joann Cassama.

The cabinet is also diverse as it includes persons from various racial, ethnic, and religious backgrounds. Rebecca Driever serves as treasurer, Fallon T. Chiasson as secretary, Sophia C. Rataj as events chair, Rana W. Thabata as community service chair, and Troi D. McClure as social chair.

Ambrose and Cassama are inspired and moved that the student body has embraced female leadership.

Cassama hopes that their tenure will break stereotypes that women are “too sensi-

tive” and that “minorities are not qualified enough.” The persistence of racism and sexism across America has often discouraged women and minorities from seeking office because they think that such prejudice will prevent them from winning.

When women and minorities do win, however, it often encourages others to jump into the arena. Loyola has had female SGA presidents before, but it has never had an all-female cabinet, nor has it had such a deeply demographically diverse cabinet.

Cassama hopes that this watershed moment will encourage other female students to seek and assume leadership roles. They did not deliberately select women; they selected the persons they considered best for the positions. And when Chiasson stepped down as Chief of Staff at the end of the fall 2018, Ambrose selected Derrick Ransom II to fill the important role.

Both Ambrose and Cassama are excited about the work they have done in the fall and the plans they have for the spring; much of their work is influenced by the interesting paths that led them to this exciting moment in Loyola’s history.

Names from Left to Right: Rana Thababata, Fallon Chiasson, Joann Cassama, Troi McClure, Sierra Ambrose, Sophia Rataj, and Rebecca Driever

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“I feel like women are not going to just get the work done but do it in style. We have to prove ourselves all the time...well we don’t have to but we feel like it, and I think having that in the back of our minds is kind of like a motivation, especially for me. I’m just super excited about what we’re doing. I see so much change happening.”

S

SIERRA AMBROSE

GA president Sierra Ambrose, a first-generation college student from Lafayette, Louisiana, chose Loyola after visiting the campus with her father.

He said to her, “Sierra, this is the school for you. I feel it in my bones.” Loyola’s holistic approach to education that seeks to cultivate the whole person and its social justice mission quickly convinced Ambrose that she made the right decision. Upon her arrival, she immersed herself in student life, becoming a member of Loyola’s First in the Pack first-generation organization, joining Delta Sigma Theta Sorority, Inc., and flourishing in her studies as a political science major. And when she did find herself struggling, she found a wonderful mentor in Arnetha Torry, her supervisor when she served as the Finance Intern for Residential Life at Loyola. “Throughout my years here at Loyola,” Ambrose said, “Mrs. Torry has guided me through my personal endeavors and instilled confidence in me.

The most important lesson that she taught me was to be satisfied with myself.”

Ambrose also found significant mentors when she ventured out into the New

been around politicians and people who worked in the public sector, [in] government.” Her studies in political science have taught her to think critically about leadership. She has flourished as a political science major and is a member of the Pi Sigma Honors Society. In the fall of 2017, she worked on Omar Mason’s campaign for a civil district court judgeship where she managed political meet and greets and worked on voter outreach planning. While working for Mason, she met State Representative Cedric Richmond and Mayor LaToya Cantrell. The exposure to campaign work had a profound impact on her and encouraged her to run for SGA president.

It is also in this world of politics and law where she found an important professional mentor: Jarvis Lewis, the Chief of Staff for Councilman Jay H. Banks, District B. She has served as a volunteer for Lewis and has had the opportunity to attend political events and to serve in City Hall. Lewis has provided Ambrose guidance to prepare her for a career in law and politics by helping her hone her professional skills. Ambrose embraces opportunities for professional development and attended Kean Miller Connection program in Baton Rouge, Louisiana and APSIA’s Diversity and Inclusion Forum in Washington DC.

Orleans community in her efforts to practice the social justice mission that Ambrose’s involvement in the political arena she was learning at Loyola. While serving allowed her to understand how leaders as an intern at United Way of Southeast could bring about significant social justice Louisiana under Charmaine Cacccioppi, changes by listening to the needs and conthe Senior Vice President of Community cerns of the people.

Impact for UWESLA Mary Ambrose took Sierra under wing. As Sierra Ambrose When asked why she decide to run for recalled, her “first year in New Orleans SGA president, Ambrose said, “I found that was an arduous one, but Ms. Ambrose was Loyola needed to grow in areas that I felt there assisting me along the way. She also like I could help in.” She saw a need to foster took me in when I had nowhere else to a more inclusive governing body that valued stay. She and I share similar backgrounds, minority groups and actively sought out so she understood the challenges that I their input. “Collective impact,” is her motto. was facing. She has been and always will be Loyola, she insisted, needed the insights there to help me and give me advice when and talents of all its students and that the I need it.” The internship experience at SGA and students must work together with UWELSA helped Ambrose fuel her passion the administration to constantly advance for inciting change and giving back to the Loyola. community. It allowed her to experience “I decided to take what I learned,” the practicing of public policy and to learn how she could have an instrumental role in she said, “take my passion for people and service, and run.” helping a population and community.

The political world also inspired Ambrose as she perceives it as a medium for fostering positive changes in communities.

“My entire life,” Ambrose recalled, “I've

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Cover Story: Women Rising “I identify with quite a few marginalized groups, I am black, I am Mexican, and I come from a family that’s not from America. . . . My dad used to always tell me I have to work twice as hard.

It’d definitely been an obstacle but it’s never something that I would deny or am ashamed of. It's a story that I can tell my children.”

JOANN CASSAMA

J

oann Cassama shared Ambrose’s ideals and goals for the university and agreed to run with her. Although only a freshman at the time, Cassama already had ideas about how she could work with Ambrose to raise up the marginalized voices in the student body and to increase transparency. She hoped to help build shared governance in which SGA worked in tandem with students, departments, and the administration to advance Loyola. Like Ambrose, Cassama’s life has always been steeped in social justice values, and she views her vice presidency as a way to give back to the Loyola community.

Born in Boston and raised in Cambridge, Massachusetts, Cassama’s family inculcated in her a social justice mindset. Her father was her first, and remains her most important mentor. His optimistic view on life taught Cassama “to look for the good even when days can get bad. . . . He has been my supporter and the person that taught me

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to always strive to be a better version of myself.” He also tried to warn her that she would face many challenges because of her many intersecting marginalized identities and she had to not only meet, but exceed expectations.

As Cassama stated, “I identify with quite a few marginalized groups, I am black, I am Mexican, and I come from a family that’s not from America. . . . My dad used to always tell me I have to work twice as hard. It’d definitely been an obstacle but it’s never something that I would deny or am ashamed of. It's a story that I can tell my children.” Cassama is determined to overcome the prejudice she faces while also helping others overcome their challenges.

To that end, she became a mentor for kids with the Breakthrough Greater Boston program, and she cultivated her own dream of becoming a pediatric cardiologist by studying hard and applying to strong biology programs across America.

From the moment she visited Loyola University New Orleans, she knew she had found her college home: “The biology department,” she said, “is small and intimate allowing room for developing relationships with my professors, and the community on campus was like no other when I visited other schools.” Upon her arrival at Loyola, she quickly immersed herself in social justice organizations. She joined the Black Student Union and volunteered as a tutor for girls in Mid-City’s Boys Hope Girls Hope. In addition, she has worked several jobs, including serving as an office assistant in Residential Life and in the Office of the President and working as a server in a restaurant. Determined to become a pediatric cardiologist, she began interning at Oschner Medical Center. And despite her demanding curriculum and her intense work, internship, and volunteer schedule, Cassama decided to run for Vice Preisdent to give back to the Loyola community.

During the spring 2018 campaign in a tough three-way race with many qualified candidates, Ambrose and Cassama set themselves apart by clearly articulating how they would practice transparency, by demonstrating their allegiance to raising marginalized voices while also representing the voices and needs of the entire student body, and by promising to act as public servants fully accessible to the Loyola community and working in partnership with them. In March 2018, they won.

Like many leaders who are breaking barriers, since taking office in August, Cassama and Ambrose strive daily to rise beyond the expectations. They became leaders at an exciting transitional moment in Loyola’s history as the university revamped the administration and inaugurated, Tania Tetlow, its first women and first layperson as president. Tetlow’s cabinet also includes many women, including of course Interim Provost Maria Calzada as well as Chief of Staff Lesli Harris, Chief Diversity Officer Sybol Anderson, and several female executive directors. Although the cabinet at Loyola has often included several women, these women are working with their male

counterparts and the SGA to foster important changes at Loyola that strengthen our social justice mission, to include more diverse voices in governing, and to provide greater transparency. Ambrose and Cassama and their cabinet are a perfect match with this new administration.

“Collective impact” through inclusive and transparent governance is the cornerstone policy of SGA under Ambrose and Cassama. With a clear and resolute mindset, Ambrose declared that in order to “achieve initiatives of diversity, inclusion, health and wellness, and community engagement,” SGA must promote transparency and develop trusting relationships between the student body, faculty, and administration, and all other members within the Loyola community. To that end, they began their work by engaging in town halls and meetings with the student body to listen to their concerns, to solicit their ideas, and to develop partnerships with SGA senators, student organizations, and with student workers in various departments.

Ambrose and Cassama have also developed a strong relationship with President Tetlow and her cabinet, which has fos-

tered exciting new collaborative efforts to address student concerns and to build on student ideas. Tetlow and her cabinet make a concerted effort to not only be accessible to the student body, but to become highly visible and approachable on campus by attending student programs, visiting student organizational meetings, and coming to town halls to candidly address questions.

SGA and the administration clearly work like a team and one that is enthusiastic about helping Loyola rise collectively to its greatest heights.

Cassama with group; Banner The devotion of SGA to inclusive teamwork has also fostered exciting new developments between student organizations, various departments, and community partners. The cabinet assigned each SGA senator to a student organization and charged senators with assisting student leaders facilitate their programs and obtain funding. Ambrose and Cassama and the cabinet have also reached out to departments to determine how they might partner with them on programs and how they might strengthen their student outreach.

The Women’s Resource Center has worked

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Cover Story: Women Rising

be expected to go above and beyond and excel and do the work that they want us to do. But it’s like I’m not being celebrated in my experience sometimes. ” She also finds “the angry black women stereotype” deeply disturbing and emphasizes that the label is used to prevent black women from asserting themselves.

closely with Ambrose, Cassama, and Community Service Chair Rana Thabata on a variety of programs, including Take Back the Night and Women Rising in the Political Arena and are working with them on programming for Black History Month and Feminist Festival. The WRC director and student staff have enjoyed developing this wonderful relationship with the SGA and have marveled at the rise of its strong and determined women leaders.

It is also the personal daily touches that Ambrose and Cassama bring to the SGA that inform their collective impact leadership. Cassama aims to ensure that all students feel a sense of inclusion and influence. On the way to meetings and classes, Cassama always takes the longest route so that she runs into as many students as possible and provides them an opportunity to reach out to her about their concerns and their ideas. She aspires daily to ensure that students understand that SGA is the student’s voice. Cassama is also conscious that many students of color might “look at me and think I can relate to you and I can come and talk to you . . . [because] I am a black Hispanic woman . . . my voice can represent them.” Ambrose also shows passion in valuing minority groups, who perhaps have never felt welcomed in certain spaces and feel their voice is diminished.

She is determined to make them as visible as the majority population.

Yet conscious of how marginalized groups become distorted when they are visible, Ambrose notes how important it is that marginalized people have the space and power to define themselves. As she said, “They want you to be black, but not too black. We are always being told to confine in these small spaces and operate the way people want us to operate but also

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“I am so happy to be a black woman,” Ambrose declares proudly, but “I am more than my skin. . . I am not your token.”

She refuses to be diminished or kept in a box of any kind. Although Ambrose takes pride in where she came from and who she is, she wants people to know that she transcends labels: “I am more than my race, I am more than my gender.” She feels a responsibility to use her identity and position to convey and advocate for marginalized people who have been trapped in boxes and have been waiting for the opportunity to break free. And she seeks to practice her beliefs by refusing to allow stereotypes to limit her. Rather, she disproves racism and sexism by overcoming obstacles, embracing challenges, and working toward her goals.

Ambrose also refuses to allow stereotypes to limit her aspirations for her career. She plans to attend law school and to serve in the legal field, first as an attorney and eventually a judge. Her genuine concern for the issues that affect communities around her and her desire to foster social justice changes has also inspired her to contemplate a career in politics; she has considered running to serve in the Louisiana State Legislature in the future. Politics for Ambrose, whether at Loyola University New Orleans, or in the state of Louisiana, or the United States, should focus on working with the people, encouraging everyone to do their part, to go above and beyond, to work for a cause that is larger than the individual, and to constantly seek to create a better world for everyone. For Ambrose, it is always about the collective:

\“It’s a collective achievement, we all must work together. It’s a collective impact.”

Ambrose and Cassama are having an extraordinary collective impact at Loyola as they work in tandem with the administration, the student body, faculty and staff, and the larger New Orleans community to constantly advance Loyola’s social justice mission. Both women also stress the importance of practicing Loyola’s social justice mission outside of campus through active community engagement with the greater New Orleans area. Ambrose encourages students to take their knowledge of Jesuit values and the skills they have learned in the university to give back to the community by volunteering for nonprofit groups and by engaging in careers and service to empower and uplift others.

Cassama calls on all of us to marvel at this moment in history where women all over the world--women who have been silenced, forced to walk behind men, denied an education--are taking a stand. “It’s a global thing,” Cassama said, and we are all part of the struggle.

Let us recall a moment that during the presidential inauguration of Loyola’s 17th president, Tania Tetlow summoned us to rise to meet this great moment in history: “ . . . this is the moment when the world needs Loyola most: as a driving engine of opportunity, as a force of innovation and change, as the place where justice and creativity come together to make the world a better place. This is our moment.” At the WRC, we speak often about how we are living in historic times at Loyola, in America, and across the world. They are not easy times as women and all marginalized persons struggle against persistent bigotry, sexism, racism, xenophobia, and violence in all corners of the globe. But we find hope as so many women across the world, across this nation, and women right here at Loyola, women like President Tetlow, Provost Calzada, President Ambrose, and Vice President Cassama are rising to meet the moment. May we all rise with them.

With all female leaders,

Loyola's future is looking bright!

Image Credits Source ~ Monroe Library Digital Archives Photography Source ~ Kyle Encar Logan Jackson Parker Anderson

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Features

A Woman’s World

By Rae Green, Lauryn Langford, Grac Riddick, Tyler Sanchez, Sky Stubbs, Rula Thabata

I

n the 2018 midterm elections, women candidates rolled the blue wave forward in a splendor of diversity and breakthrough victories.

According to the Center for American Women and Politics at Rutgers, 428 Democratic women and 162 Republicans women campaigned for Congress or governor this year, with 210 Democrats and 63 Republicans making it to the final election.

Over 100 women will serve in the House, a majority of them Democrats, marking the largest concentration of women in Congress.Women candidates transformed the road to victory. Rather than seeking to fit into a man’s world, they brought their constituencies into a woman’s world and awakened the collective American mind to the power and promise of women.

Many of the women have become the “firsts.” Deb Haaland and Sharice Davids were the first Native Americans to win

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the Blue Wave & the American Awakening

a Congressional election in New Mexico and Kansas, respectively. Rashida Tlaid in Michigan and Ilhan Omar in Minnesota were the first Muslim women. Veronica Escobar and Sylvia Garcia were the first Latino women elected to Congress from Texas. Ayanna Pressley and Jahana Hayes were the first African American women elected to Congress in Massachusetts and Connecticut, respectively. Jane Mills was the first woman to win the governorship in Maine and Lou Leon Guerrero the first in Guam. Stacey Abrams, even though she lost the Georgia gubernatorial race, came close to winning in a conservative stronghold on a progressive platform. Local races across the country also produced exciting results. In the case of Harris County, Texas, where 19 black women judges ran for reelection and won.

The incoming class of women in Congress included several teachers and it even

boasted the 2016 Teacher of the Year, Jahana Hayes. Many of the teachers were also veterans and some teachers had STEM backgrounds. Chrissy Houlahan, an Air Force Veteran with a background as an industrial engineer and chemistry teacher, won Pennsylvania’s 6th District. Elaine Luria won Virginia’s 2nd District as a former Naval commander and nuclear engineer. Mikie Sherrill, a navy pilot, won New Jersey’s 11th District. Lauren Underwood, a registered nurse, also joined the freshmen class and won Illinois’s 14th District.

Underwood had previously served as an adviser to the Department of Health and Human Services during the Obama Administration. The platforms of the new Congresswomen run the gamut but many focused on healthcare, education, climate change, economic security, equal opportunity, and the protection of voting rights and American democracy. Even the candidates who lost Congressional and guber-

natorial races reshaped the gendered rules that have governed political campaigns.

These women dared to embrace their identities rather than trying to walk the tightrope between gendered stereotypes of qualities that are perceived as either too masculine for a woman or too feminine for a politician. They competed assertively and they did not fear to boldly call out sexism, bigotry, and racism. Some even shared personal stories of sexual harassment and abuse. Many of them wore their marginalized gender and sexual orientation identities proudly. One example is Christine Hallquist who won the Democratic Primary in the Vermont gubernatorial race and openly spoke of her life as a transgender woman. Although Hallquist lost, she garnered far more support than originally predicted by winning the primary. Moreover, some women who embraced their marginalized identities won.

Kyrsten Sinema, who won the senate race in Arizona, is openly bisexual and Sharice Davids is openly lesbian. Many women candidates also dared to embrace their motherhood. Some included their children in advertisements, others breastfed on the campaign trail, and Liuba Grechen Shirley successfully changed a campaign law to allow for the use of campaign funds for childcare.

2018 produced an incredible class of female candidates in the Democratic Party, many of whom were politicized in the wake of Trump’s victory and the sexism and racism that brought him to power. They ushered in a blue wave. Even those who lost contributed to the changing nature of the campaign trail and they helped reshape the foundation for a future in which the halls of power begin to more accurately reflect the diversity of the American people.

Here is a look at some of the exceptional women who ran and some of the new women leaders in the United States Congress.

CHRISTINE HALLQUIST

KYRSTEN SINEMA

Christine Hallquist spent her life opening doors for others while supporting the people around her. Hallquist has been the CEO of Vermont Electric Coop since 2005, which is one of the leading companies that uses renewable resources for energy production. In 2015, Hallquist made history by becoming the first transgender person to transition while holding a CEO position, and again when she became the first transgender person to win the nomination in Vermont’s governor’s race against three other democratic candidates. She ran on a platform advocating for a higher minimum wage, stronger support for public education, and breaking down racial inequality-specifically in the justice system. Hallquist’s background in engineering, her leadership experience, and her community service, including working on the board of Sterling Area Services Mental Health Board, Lamoille Economic Development Corporation Board, and the Hyde Park School Board, made her a promising candidate.

Hallquist lost the election to Republican incumbent Phil Scott, but it is still an important benchmark in Vermont’s history and in the trans community.

Ironically, Arizona’s senator-elect Kyrsten Sinema was born in 1976, the same year the last democrat in office was elected, but the list of firsts doesn’t stop there; she is the first woman elected to the United States Senate in Arizona and the first openly bisexual senator. The race for the seat vacated

by Senator Jeff Sessions also proved historic because Sinema’s Republican opponent was also a woman, Martha McSally. McSally and Sinema served together in the Arizona House of Representatives. Sinema represented Arizona’s 9th District and McSally represented the 2nd District. Sinema’s significance in the election goes beyond campaign promises; she has real life experience to bring to her battle for better treatment of struggling Americans. She experienced poverty and homelessness as a child; her mother, stepfather, and sister squatted for over two years in an abandoned gas station.

Sinema was determined to excel despite her difficult circumstances. She received a scholarship to attend Brigham Young University and later earned a masters in social work, a law degree, and a doctorate in justice studies from Arizona State University.

Although she worked for Ralph Nader’s 2000 Presidential campaign, she ran as a moderate in the Arizona race, opposing calls by progressives to abolish ICE and to pass a Medicare For All bill. She fiercely supports other progressive measures such as greater funding and services for victims of domestic violence, decriminalizing marijuana, and gun regulation. Sinema’s win is a significant one.

Source: https://sinema.house.gov/uploads/ KyrstenSinema.jpg Author: US House Office of Photography

Source: https://sinema.house.gov/uploads/ KyrstenSinema.jpg Author: US House Office of Photography

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Features

SHARICE DAVIDS

JAHANA HAYES

Sharice Davids, a member of the Ho-Chunk nation, was elected to serve Kansas’s 3rd Congressional District in the 2018 midterm elections. A historic win, the former MMA fighter joined New Mexico’s Deb Haaland as the first two indigenous women elected to Congress. Davids was also the first open lesbian elected to the U.S. House of Representatives. A Cornell law graduate, she was selected for the White House Fellowship program in 2016. Davids worked on community development in the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota for five years and she used the time she spent there as a testament to her knowledge and dedication for people. It included issues closest to those of her own state in Kansas. Running on a campaign of affordable healthcare, quality public school education, sensible gun laws, and rights for marginalized communities, she was able to garner support from a district which had not voted Democrat in ten years and she defeated four-time incumbent Republican Representative Kevin Yoder, flipping the seat.

Jahana Hayes, the 2016 National Teacher of the Year, has experienced struggle; drug addiction ran in her family, she was a teenage mom; she lived in public housing; and she was surrounded by a world of violence. As she worked hard to become an exceptional teacher in Waterbury, Connecticut, she also sought to better her community by running for office. In 2018, Hayes won the Democratic nomination for the open 5th Congressional District seat.

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ILHAN OMAR

Ilhan Omar is a Somalian-born Muslim, immigrant, and politician for the Democratic-Farmer-Labor Party in Minnesota. At the age of eight, Omar and her family fled Somalia during its civil war.

They spent four years in a Kenyan refugee camp before moving to America in 1997.

Omar first began her career in politics at the age of 14, working as a translator for her grandfather at the Democratic-FarmerLabor Party caucuses. Omar served as a community educator at the University of Minnesota and a Senior Policy Aide for the Although she is fairly new to the political Minneapolis City Council. In 2016, she ran world, she is winning the hearts and minds for the Minnesota House of Representative of folks across the political spectrum. She in District 60B. During her campaign, she continues to beat the odds and wants a and her staff increased voter turnout in her change for her children, running a platform community by 37 percent, and she won the advocating for further funding for teachers election. During her state congressional and more comprehensive support for service, she introduced important laws students. "People told me I had no chance like HF3434, which removed the statute and I had no business trying to do this,” of limitations on sex crimes. In the 2018 Hayes told the Hartford Courant. “Tonight midterm elections, she won over 70 we proved them wrong," said Hayes. Hayes percent of the vote. Omar became the first won the 2018 election, making her the Somali-American in Congress. She and first black woman from Connecticut to be Rashida Tlaib, elected in the midterms to elected into the U.S. house.

Michigan’s 13th District, became the first Muslim women elected to the United States Congress. Omar and Tlaib will inspire girls all over the country by showing them that just because someone is in a marginalized group, it does not mean that they cannot create change.

WRITING CONTRIBUTIONS Tyler Sanchez Ragine Green Marina Britos-Swain Sky Stubbs Parker Anderson Lauryn Langford Delaney Harper Rula Thabata Hannah Castillo ART CONTRIBUTIONS Shelby Pojawa Storm Wells Erika Torres

SYLVIA GARCIA

ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ

Texas’s 29th Congressional District represents the Greater Houston area and is home to a large Latinx population.

With a landslide win, Sylvia Garcia became the first Latina to represent the district in Congress. Garcia, the eighth of ten children, was raised in the farming community of Palito Blanco, Texas. She earned dual degrees in social work and political science from Texas Woman’s University and her law degree from Thurgood Marshall School of Law at Texas Southern University. She served in the Texas State Senate for six years and ran for the seat open by the retirement of incumbent Gene Green. She defeated Republican candidate Phillip Arono in the midterm general election. Garcia’s platform includes supporting veterans, immigrant rights, paid sick leave, a higher minimum wage, women’s health, and accessible healthcare. She focused much of her campaign on immigration issues.

Texas’ 29th Congressional District will now have actual representation of the Latinx community as a result of Garcia’s victorious win.

When 28-year-old Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez won the election in 2018 she became the youngest member of Congress. She ran for New York’s 14th Congressional District, defeating Congressman and Chair of the Democratic Caucus, Joe Crowley in the June primary race. Ocasio-Cortez is a voice for the new wave of first-time politicians. During the election, she attributed her understanding of economic issues to the differences she noticed between her neighborhood and her school’s higher-income neighborhood.

After her father passed away, OcasioCortez took on two jobs while she was still in school to help out her family. Her experience with health-care, education, and immigration led her to take a political lead within her community to create change.

Ocasio-Cortez’s political career included campaigning for Bernie Sanders during his 2016 presidential. She won the midterm election with over 75 percent of the vote.

Issues important to Ocasio-Cortez range from the abolition of ICE, to tuition-free college.

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Features

Breaking Barriers with Jared Polis:

By Stephanie Adams and Tess Rowland

I

n the midterm elections, Colorado elected its first openly gay Governor, Jared Polis. Progress persists as he followed the election of Kate Brown, the first openly bisexual governor in America. The historic win means that Democrats will retain the governor’s mansion, but now more than ever the LGBT community will have secure representation at a state-wide level. But Polis is no stranger to thriving in the face of adversity; in 2008, he became the first openly gay man elected to the Colorado House of Representatives. Polis also broke barriers as the first Jewish governor of the state. Throughout his political career, Polis has pushed for universal health care, free early childhood

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LGBT in Government

education, paid family leave, and renewable energy; he hopes to make Colorado into a 100% renewable energy state.

Before his career in politics, while still attending Princeton University, Polis co-founded his first company, American Information Systems. This company is a full service technology firm meant to specialize in the planning and support of information technology in small to medium sized businesses. Prior to this monumental success, he also launched bluemountain.com and Proflowers.com, a card company and flower delivery company. He was named an “Entrepreneur of the Year” by Ernst and Young.

Polis’s election comes at a pivotal time in American politics. During a midterm election season full of diverse candidates, Governor Elect Polis provides both the Jewish community and the LGBT community with the representation they have been lacking in the state government.

Image Credit Source ~ WikiMedia Commons Author ~ Corkythehornetfan

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WRC Rising

WRC RISING

Programming & Advocacy on Campus Unpacking Rape Culture: A Student Panel*

By Delaney Harper

W

hen we talk about rape, we don’t talk about why rape happens.

Second-wave feminists in the 70s gave the reason a name, but for the 40+ years the term has existed, we only talk about rape culture when we can’t escape the news of another sexual assault. Bringing it up any other time is just a downer. So, what we have is a name that means something only if someone else brings it up first. Otherwise, we shrug and say, “What can you do?”

If you’re anything like the participants in the panel “Unpacking Rape Culture,” you do everything you can. The Women’s Resource Center (WRC), Student

Affairs, University Counseling Center, and Students Against Sexual Assault (SASA) sponsored this panel in hopes of raising awareness about how each of us at Loyola might work together to diminish rape culture. Recent graduate of Loyola, Sequoya LaJoy opened the forum with a presentation of a survey she and sociology professor Dr. Marcus Kondkar conducted exploring sexual assault on Loyola’s campus in the spring 2018. Hadori Bukle, a senior business major and moderator of the gender organization Feminist Fridays, introduced the all-student panel and began generating a discussion of both the factors of a society that trivializes sexual assault as well as the results of the trivialization.

From there, panelists Noelie Zechik, Daniel DeBarge, Gabriella Rodriguez, Laura Porter, and Brailey Penny engaged in an open dialogue about sexual assault.

In order to recognize our roles in rape culture, we need to know what rape culture is. DeBarge, an advocacy leader at the Women’s Resource Center, says a common misconception among his male peers is that they think rape is the only facet of rape culture; in reality, staying silent when someone discredits a sexual assault survivor, participates in “locker room talk,” or has an overall sexist attitude normalizes behaviors that serve as a foundation of objectification. Speaking out can be difficult when we live in a society that dismisses and even encourages boasting about sexual conquests, but it must be done. If it isn’t, women will continue to disregard oppressive behavior and feed into the cycle of rape culture.

“Having informed conversations about sexual violence in terms of gender helps each person understand where they play into [rape culture] and understand how to seek justice, like understanding schools’, states’, and locations’ policies to make you feel safer,”

From Left to Right, Back: Noelie Zechik and Hadori Bukle From Left to Right, Front: Daniel DeBarge, Gabriella Rodreguez, Laura Porter, and Brailey Penny

48

says Porter, the community service organizer for Students of Color Against Gender Violence Community at Dillard University.

Blaming women for sexual assault perpetuates rape culture. Zeichik, Vice President of Philanthropy in Alpha Chi Omega and

Co-Director of WRC’s advocacy team, calls this a “predator-prey relationship,” in which women are expected to try at all costs to avoid the predator; otherwise, it’s her fault for walking too close to a lion’s den. If that were true, then the hundreds of thousands of women who responded to the #MeToo Movement must have camped outside like they were waiting for the new iPhone to drop. After a while, we have to ask ourselves, how the hell do 25% of women come across so many lions?

The #MeToo movement finally validated survivors of sexual assault, even to those like Rodriguez, President of Students Against Sexual Assault, who has used her voice in the past: “When I first started speaking about my sexual assault, I didn’t feel that support, but after the #MeToo Movement… it was incredible to see I wasn’t alone. It made me realize there was this nest of support from people and it empowered and strengthened me to go forward.”

Still, there are marginalized groups that remain unheard. Transgender persons and people of color face disproportionately high rates of sexual assault, and despite making up that 25%, many Americans can often only name white women who responded to the movement, Penny, Vice President of Plus+, remarks. There are little to no statistics on sexual violence against transgender persons; when people of color report sexual assaults, they are rarely believed. Porter emphasizes that men of color often confront disbelief when they report that they were victims of sexual assault.

Rodriguez adds, “[People of color] have to fight extra hard because we never know if people aren’t believing us because we are people of color or because of the stigma around sexual assault.”

means we haven’t talked about sexual assault enough. With the #MeToo Movement and dialogues like these happening all over the country, at least, we have a starting point. We can look back in a year and compare notes. In the meantime, we can continue to encourage discussions between peers that will diminish rape culture; we can hold rallies; we can demand justice; we can toil daily toward change.

“Unpacking Rape Culture” doesn’t mean that we pack it up again when the discussion is over and the panelists have left. It remains an uphill battle for many survivors across America just to be heard; this

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WRC Rising

Take Back the Night

T

his year on October 17th, the Women’s Resource Center and the Counseling Center at Loyola University New Orleans teamed up with Xavier, Dillard, and Tulane to host the 27th Annual Take Back the Night ceremony, march, and speak-out to raise awareness about sexual assault.

With the current politicization sur-

Counselwoman Halena Moreno

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By Serena Hill

rounding sexual assault, Take Back the Night provided a light for survivors who felt like they had been forced into the dark.

The opening event that preceded the walk gave survivors an opportunity to hear speeches from the people standing with them in solidarity.

Loyola’s President Tania Tetlow, an active advocate against sexual violence and domestic abuse, thanked those in attendance, exclaiming, “Your resilience takes my breath away, and it’s what has fueled me for so many years doing this work.” Her sentiments were echoed by Helena Moreno, the Vice President of the New Orleans City Council and First Division Councilmember-at-Large, as she attempted to dispel the voices that place blame on survivors by empowering the audience members to live their lives unapologetically.

Keynote Speaker, Stephanie Boyd

The keynote speaker this year was Loyola graduate student Stephanie Boyd, who shared her story of healing with the crowd. She discussed how the cura personalis, “care for the whole person,” that she experiences from Loyola faculty and students pushes her to keep moving forward while inspiring others to persist. Boyd also tries to help oth-

ers heal; she and her mother manage stopsexualassault.org, a website and organization that works to raise awareness about the plight of reporting and the kinds of healing that survivors can go through.

The march itself allowed attendees to revel in the glow of solidarity, as allies and survivors joined hands to bring visibility to this prevalent issue. The speakout that followed gave survivors an opportunity to share their own stories in a safe space. This portion of Take Back the Night might be one of the most important, because it gives those who have been forced into silence an chance to be heard and supported by people who understand their experiences.

It is for this reason that events like Take Back the Night need to happen, especially on college campuses.

Forums, speak-outs, marches, and other events of the like allow us to bring our voices together and create a safe network of people who care about each otherâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s mutual struggles.

By allowing ourselves to be seen and heard, we are performing active resistance and shifting the culture surrounding sexual violence.

Take Back

Night 2018 he

T

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WRC Rising

Vigil for Tree of Life Synagogue

A

t 5:00 p.m. on Friday, November 2, Loyola students and community members gathered in the Peace Quad at Loyola University New Orleans to hold a vigil in solidarity with the Tree of Life Synagogue.

The vigil featured prayers, as well as speeches from President Tania

Tetlow, Father Gregory Waldrop, and Rana Thabata, the community service chair of the Student Government Association and a member of the Muslim Student Association.

Krewe du Jew President Margaux Schexnider served as the keynote speaker. Following the vigil, we walked in a candlelight procession to Temple Sinai to attend Shabbat

services. We wanted to share with our readers the powerful speech

by Margaux Schexnider, who is a member of the Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Resource Centerâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s staff and who serves on the advocacy team.

Photo courtesy of NOLA.com/The Times Picayune

Co-Presidents of Krewe Du Jew, Margaux Schexnider and Sophia Brown 52

It is a Tree of Life, And I will Hold Fast To It

L

ast week, the Torah reading was the very famous one of Avraham and Sarah leaving the doors to their tent open to anyone who wanted to enter.

This moment in the Torah is one that exemplifies how Jews live their lives: by welcoming the stranger in all possible ways, in your house, in your temple, or in your heart. This value is called “chach nasad orhim”.

We, as Jews, know what it is like to be persecuted and thus make an additional effort to welcome others, to prevent this feeling upon anyone else. This tenant of our religion was violated on Saturday, October 27th when a shooter attacked the congregation of Tree of Life synagogue convened to pray during Shabbat, and 11 of my people were killed.

While this was happening, I was in Phoenix, Arizona at a National Jewish Youth Convention which, the same day of the shooting, was protested by neo-nazis and white supremacists. I felt as though my heart and my prayers were empty.

I was at this convention expecting a weekend filled with laughter and love while surrounded by Jews, something I rarely experience, but instead of this, I felt surrounded by hatred.

Unfortunately, however, this is nothing new. I, as well as all other Jews on the earth right now, are the luckiest Jews alive, because this shooting could have happened anywhere. Anti-Semitism is on the rise in the U.S., and these tragedies just

prove how far people are willing to go to prove their hatred. But for the rest of the world, anti-Semitism is generally ignored. Smaller scale incidences that Jews experience daily are unheard by the public and the media. It’s almost as if we are only being heard when we are being murdered. And even then, it’s only when it’s a mass murder. Mireille Knoll, a Holocaust survivor who was killed for being Jewish, barely got any attention from the media.

The synagogue that got vandalized in Brooklyn this morning with graffiti that says “Kill the Jews” inside of the synagogue in several different places was barely talked about. That’s because being “woke” and being “socially aware” doesn’t include caring about Jews.

And now, I stand before you as a Jew with a broken heart. A simple Jew who can only hope to be as courageous as the friends, families, and victims of Tree of Life. I can only hope to be as courageous as the family of David and Cecil Rosenthal, who must now continue their lives without the 2 brothers. I can only hope to be as courageous as Bernice and Sylvan Simon, who got married at Tree of Life 60 years prior and who continuously played an active role in their Jewish community. I can only hope to be as courageous as Dr. Jerry Rabinowitz, who had initially escaped the line of fire of the shooter and who then was killed when he returned in the sanctuary trying to save others. I can only hope to be as courageous as the congregants of Tree of Life

By Margaux Schexnider

synagogue, who will faithfully continue going to services where the worst anti-Semitic attack in American history took place because we as Jews are resilient and will never back down in the face of terror.

The day after the shooting, I received an email from my synagogue, who proudly hangs a banner outside of the sanctuary saying “we are a house of prayer for all” saying that they will, yet again, have to amp up security. This shouldn’t come as a shock though, since congregants must get screened before going to Yom Kippur services at Touro, and congregants must pass through two security checkpoints before entering the synagogue in my hometown. The feeling of potentially being unsafe when going to temple is spreading rapidly, not only across the U.S., but the world.

The Jewish community needs solidarity right now. Not only solidarity, but also support, and I hope that after tonight, you all make an additional effort to inform yourselves on the injustices that Jews face regularly and that next time you hear something anti-Semitic, next time you see something antis-Semitic or next time you read something anti-Semitic, I hope you stand up and don’t degrade yourself by becoming a bystander.

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WRC Rising

WOMEN RISING In the Political Arena

By Catalina Espitia, Tyler Sanchez, Sky Stubbs Sponsored by the Women’s Resource Center, the Department of Political Science, the Student Government Association, and the student organizations Loyola Society for Civic Engagement and Women in Politics.

O

n October 25, Loyola University New Orleans hosted a forum, Women Rising in the Political Arena that included scholars, Councilwoman Cyndi Nguyen and Dr. Tammy Savoie and Alsie Dunbar. Both recent graduates of Emerge Louisiana that trains Democratic women to run for office. Political science majors and leaders of the Women Resource Center’s programming team, Rula Thabata and Athena Merida, moderated the panel. During the presentation portion, Associate Professor of Political Science, Sean Cain and his research assistants, Mallory Dickerson and Ari Acevedo, explored the surge in women running for office in 2018 as well as the efforts of women to pass legislation while serving.

office because “she was tired of being tired.”

She had grown frustrated with the difficulties residents in her district faced, including poor access to a strong education and economic security. In the 2017 election, she defeated the incumbent for District “E” in New Orleans. Since she took office, she has been fighting to ensure that all workers earn a living wage, that all children have access to an excellent public education from preschool to high school, and that local businesses have greater opportunities to thrive. Nguyen also focuses on ending the prison pipeline and on helping former prisoners reintegrate into society.

DR. TAMMY SAVOIE

COUNSELWOMAN CYNDI NGUYEN

Sergeant. During her service, she earned a bachelor’s and master’s in psychology and a PhD in clinical psychology from Emory University in Atlanta. In 1994, Savoie was commissioned in the United States Air Force as captain and rose to the rank of lieutenant colonel. An expert in drug abuse prevention and post traumatic stress disorder, she served in Afghanistan and across much of the Middle East. Savoie shared how her experiences in the military and in working as a psychologist have shaped her desire to serve in Congress.

Some of her policy goals included: eliminate the gender pay gap, enact medical care for all, implement pay raises for teachers, cap class sizes, and end the student debt crisis. Savoie emphasized the importance of women standing up for themselves and other women, but she also stressed that she had found many incredibly supportive male allies in her career and worked with them to produce positive programs for the communities she served.

ALSIE DUNBAR

Dr. Tammy Savoie, a recent graduate of Emerge Louisiana, ran for Louisiana’s 1st Congressional District. Though she lost this election, many hope she will continue Councilwoman Cyndi Nguyen immigrated to pursue a career in politics. Savoie exemplifies the self-made woman. She enlisted to the United States at the age of 5 when she fled Vietnam with her family. Her expe- in the Air National Guard after graduating rience as an immigrant inculcated in her a from St. Mary’s Dominican High School in New Orleans. She served for fifteen years strong work ethic as well as great compasas a Law Enforcement and Security Forces sion for marginalized populations. CounSpecialist, rising to the rank of Technical cilwoman Nguyen said that she ran for

54

Alsie Dunbar spent 19 years in the chemical industry as a scientist and engineer for several Fortune 100 companies. Alsie Dunbar shared her commitment to uplifting girls and women; she founded a group

called STEM Gems, a mentoring group to help girls succeed in science and math and pursue STEM fields. She was named a Top 40 Under 40 Honoree by the Greater Business Bureau Report and has had two proclamations issued in her honor by the City of Gonzalez and the Parish of Ascension.

Dunbar and Savoie were among Emerge Louisianaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s first graduating class in 2018.

Emerge Louisiana provides Democratic women who want to run for office 70 hours of training in a 6-month period. Dunbar recalls that it was a powerful and exhausting experience. However she enjoyed the bonds she forged with the women in the program.

Loyola students had the opportunity to meet and speak with Dr. Savoie, Ms. Dunbar, and Councilwoman Nguyen.

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WRC Rising

“Five Awake”

The Women Who Changed Domestic Violence Laws in Louisiana

By Patricia Boyett

S

"

he’s dead. He murdered her. He went in and shot the family.

Pixie knew he was going to do this. Pixie knew he was capable of this,” said Charmaine Caccioppi, her piercing blue eyes haunted with the memory as she begins to recount the “horror” that devastated LeFourche Parish, Louisiana on December 26, 2013. It is a story that Caccioppi has told about the murder of her friend many times and told again for the documentary "Five Awake," directed and produced by Donna Dees and

Susan Willis. Caccioppi tells it in hopes that her telling and her work to secure stronger domestic abuse laws will save lives and save others from the trauma that Pixie’s family and all who loved them suffered because of the rage of an abuser.

On December 4, Caccioppi accompanied Dees, Kim Sport (the founder of Women United), and Mary Claire Landry (the executive director of the Family Justice Center) for a screening of Five Awake and a panel discussion at Loyola University

New Orleans. Sponsors of the event, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America and the Women’s Resource Center, aimed for the event to raise awareness about domestic abuse and teach the Loyola community how grassroots efforts to stem gender violence could prove incredibly successful. Laura “Red” Devit, the NOLA Group Lead of Moms and Martha Alguera, the State lead of Moms, consider gun regulation vital to diminishing domestic abuse murders and rampages by abusers. They tabled before the event to share

From left to right: Donna Dees, Kim Sport, Mary Claire Landry, Chamaine Caccioppi

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literature with attendees about Moms and the student group at Tulane and Loyola: Students Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.

Some fifty people gathered in Miller Hall to watch the powerful film, which opens with Caccioppi retelling the killing that devastated a family and haunted a parish.

On that winter morning in LaFourche Parish, Ben Freeman drowned his wife, Denise Taylor Freeman, in a bathtub.

Then he drove toward the home of his ex-in-laws, Councilman Louis Phillip and Pixie Gouaux. Freeman and the Goaxu’s daughter Jeanne were in a bitter custody dispute; she had several protective orders filed against him.

When Freeman arrived, Jeanne was not in the home; her sister Andrea and her parents were babysitting the four children she had with Freeman. They heard a knock on the door. Before Councilman Goaux

could answer the door, Freeman aimed his rifle and shot a hole in it. The bullet lodged in Goaux’s throat. Pixie rushed forward to fight; but it was too late; he shot off her arms. He proceeded into the bedroom where Andrea was babysitting his children. He told his kids to lay face down on the floor; he shot Andrea and left her a paraplegic.

Freeman continued his rampage, driving to Terrebonne Parish to the home of the CEO of Oschner, Milton Bourgeois, where he shot him to death and shot his wife Ann in the leg. Freeman, who worked as a registered nurse, had been fired from Oschner in 2011. Police later found Freeman, who had shot himself to death, on US Highway 90 near Bayou Blue. “I don’t know that you can appropriately grasp the horror,” Caccioppi recalled. “I mean because this is horror. This is horror.

Real, raw horror. And I just don’t think you can comprehend; for hours, you sat

there in disbelief, and you never could really understand that something this horrific could happen, especially to a family that you loved so much and that was just so undeserving of this. And I mean this sincerely, how do you make it right? How? What do you do? What do you do as one individual?”

Caccioppi struggled to make it right, to make sure her friend had not died in vain.

A woman of considerable influence as the Chief Operating Officer of United Way of Southeast Louisiana, she began reaching out to friends to develop a coalition. Soon, she partnered with Kim Sport, Mary Claire Landry, and Executive Director of Louisiana Coalition Against Domestic Violence Beth Meeks. They developed a legislative package that they brought to then Louisiana Image Credits Photography ~ Stephanie Adams

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Congresswoman Helena Moreno. She agreed to help them take the bill through the legislative process.

All of the women continue to work on efforts to improve legislation. In 2017, their work led to the extension of domestic violence protection to same sex couples Although the five women faced fierce and dating partners; made second charges resistance, they simply refused to accept of domestic violence a felony; and ensured no for an answer. At one point a legislator prosecutors could file felony charges shook his finger in Sport’s face when she against abusers who violate protective demanded that domestic violence be conorders by harming protected persons. sidered a felony. She grabbed his finger and Still, more work remains. Devit informed said, “Just how many times do you want the audience that Moms planned to flood a man to beat his wife before it becomes the Louisiana State Capitol during the a felony?” The women flooded the offices legislative session in the spring 2019 to of state legislators; they visited sheriffs, support bills to regulate guns in Louisiana. judges, and district attorneys and garCaccioppi pointed out that we often see nered their support; they built a grassroots on the news that a mass shooter had been constituency; they protested at the capitol. previously charged with domestic violence.

And finally, in 2015, the Louisiana State Legislature passed their legislative packThe women also shared with the audience age, which included: how the Loyola community could support their work by engaging in letter-writing 1) Increased penalties for domestic abuse campaigns, writing op-eds, attending council meetings to find out how local 2) Firearm prohibitions for offenders officials are responding to domestic abuse in New Orleans, and by joining the 3) Guidelines for Domestic Abuse journey with Moms to Baton Rouge to Intervention Programs lobby for gun regulations. After the forum, 4) Expedited transmission of protective or- Caccioppi gave to the Women’s Resource ders to statewide law enforcement database Center the United Against Domestic Violence (2015 ) report that contains statis5) Prohibition of release on recognizance tics, state legislation, and newspaper coverfor violation of protective orders age of domestic abuse incidents in several parishes. Some of the statistic include: 6) Immediate divorce for victims 1) One in every four women will experi7) Punitive damages for victims ence domestic violence in her lifetime 8) The creation of the Domestic Violence Prevention Commission Kim Sport served as the first chairman of the commission, which ultimately led to the implementation or revision of 50 provisions of domestic violence law.

After the film, Devit led a moderated discussion with Dees, Caccioppi, Sport, and Landry. The women discussed the challenges they overcame to pass the legislation as well as their current work to constantly improve methods, laws, and services to protect survivors of domestic abuse. They also delved into their work to prevent domestic abuse. Landry shared that the Family Justice Center is partnering with Camp HOPE America to offer a summer camp to children, ages 8 to 11, who have experienced family violence.

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2) An estimated 1.3 million women are victims of physical assault by an intimate partner each year.

3) 85% of domestic violence victims are women.

4) Most cases of domestic violence are never reported to the police.

5) Almost one-third of female homicide victims that are reported in police records are killed by an intimate partner.

The stories of those who survived domestic abuse and of those who were killed haunted the WRC staff. Yet the phenomenal work of five women who determined to strengthen legislation in Louisiana to protect survivors motivated the staff too.

Caccioppi told the audience that one of the bills in the legislative package was named the Susan “Pixie” Gouaux Act. “She did not die in vain,” Caccioppi said.

Five women made sure of that. Those five women awakened a state. And they continue to work daily to protect survivors and to strengthen laws and prevention programs.

Loyola University & Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense In America Present a screening of Five Awake , the film that chronicles the women who worked to strengthen Louisianaâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Domestic Violence Laws.

Join us for a screening of the film and panel discussion with Special Guests: Donna Dees

Charmaine Caccioppi

Kim Sport

Mary Claire Landry

Filmmaker

Executive Vice President & COO United Way of SE LA

Founder of Womens United

Executive Director, New Orleans Family Justice Center

December 4th at 6:30pm Loyola University Miller Hall 6363 Saint Charles Ave New Orleans, LA 70118

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Since the screening, the WRC staff has been developing plans to support this incredible work. To that end, the center plans to engage in more activism to call for more funding for support services, to strengthen legislation to protect survivors and to diminish violence, and to contribute to the national conversation about reducing a culture that allows gender violence to persist at alarming rates. During the spring semester, the WRC will reach out to the Loyola community and beyond to stand in solidarity with survivors.

As the closing words in the documentary articulates and as the film showed, an awakening of a few determined souls might awaken and move a state. Imagine how that awakening might move a nation with every new voice that calls out, with every new soul in the struggle, with every new call for a relative, for a friend, for a colleague to rise with them--to rise for the wounded, to rise for the survivor, to rise for the fallen who can rise no more.

One woman Awake Awakens another.

The second awakes a next door neighbor.

And three can arouse a town, And turn the whole place upside down.

And many awake Can raise such a fuss That it finally awakens the rest of us.

One woman up with dawn in her eyes

Multiplies -"Five Awake"

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Supporting Immigrant Families

By Susan Weisher

O

n September 7 the Trump Administration released proposed regulations that would gut the 1997 Flores court settlement that provides important standards for the treatment of children in immigrant detention. The proposed rules would result in the indefinite detention of immigrant children and families, including asylum seekers.

The public comment period on the proposed rules was 60 days, ending November 6. 2018. In addition, in October the Trump Administration proposed changes to the definition of "public charge" that would prevent all but the wealthiest of persons from obtaining Legal Permanent Residency (i.e. "green cards") and would discourage struggling immigrant families from seeking the medical care and food support they need (and are eligible for) to live

healthy lives and thrive. The public rules rejected proven alternatives to comment period for these proposed mass detention, which are more hurules ended December 10, 2018. mane, effective, and less costly. The second set of proposed rules would enact a "wealth test," fundamentally changing who would be able to enter and stay in the United States.

For these reasons the WRC hosted a comment writing campaign in November and December at the Dana Student Center and collected and submitted over 400 comment slips.

The Womenâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Resource Center partnered with Dr. Sue Weishar of the Jesuit Social Research Institute to collect comments from persons who wished to write them in the Loyola community to send to the Department of Homeland Security to oppose these measures. Our social justice community at the WRC found such new rules morally reprehensible. The first set of proposed 61

Feminist Worlds

Feminist Worlds Ode to my Oppressor;

By Marina Britos-Swain

You are the noose around my neck.

You take the very air from my lungs, The passion from my bones.

Please!

Remove the cotton from your ears and listen.

Remove your hands from my throat And hear what I have to say.

Stop! Plucking my eyes out so I may see the world for my own.

Please! Stop breaking my hands so I may create a future far better than this one.

Please.. open your eyes and see, You are oppressing me.

Why? Why? Why do you hate me?

Is it because I do not listen to your rule?

Because I do not conform to what you believe perfect to be?

Is it because I differ from you?

No, you loathe me out of fear, Fear for the unknown, The unforeseeable future.

I am the new generation, I am the much needed change.

So put down your gun and silence your tongue, Open your eyes and see, You need me.

Chameleons

By Emmaline Bouchillon Chameleons are whimsical Their eyes float in opposite direction And life is sweet Slowly swimming on brittle branches Chameleons are colorful New hues dance across their skin With fleeting feet Tip-toeing over each pore, skating by Chameleons are lucky Because each pigment and shade Are celebrated as such Rainbows are sublime Why would anyone want to be colorblind When there is so much beauty Radiating from individuality?

Embrace the differences.

Chameleons are sneaky They can hide within themselves Change their color Blend in Camouflage Their mamas never had to say Other chameleons donâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t like Pink Green And blue Maybe if we were all chameleons We could just get along

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Like Phoenixes We Rise