Women’s Resource Center – Forty Years: The History of Women at Bowdoin

Proposal for a Women’s Resource Center

In February 1980, Lois Egasti, Bowdoin’s Dean of Students, sent this proposal to the Student Life Committee requesting that a “long overdue” Women’s Resource Center be established at 24 College St (Document CS, 61.1). At the time there were 10 women living at 24 College St. The space was to remain a dormitory in addition to a space designated for Bowdoin women. That the space was meant for Bowdoin women is evidenced by the name, Women’s Resource Center, and by the proposal’s suggested purposes for the center. The Women’s Resource Center was to be a “comfortable social setting” and serve as the official headquarters for the Bowdoin Women’s Association. The proposal held that “any groups, Bowdoin or local, concerned with women’s issues” could meet in the center.

According to the feminist issue of To the Root published in March 1980, the regular library did not have any periodicals related to women but did have a subscription to Playboy. One main purposes of founding a Women’s Resource Center was to create a space for a library of material by and about women.

The letter to the editor of the college newspaper on February 22, 1980 announces the acceptance of the proposal and invites people to participate in the Women’s Resource Center (Document CS, 61.2). From the beginning, the members of the Women’s Resource Center Collective attempted to raise awareness and build community. The opening of the center marked an important transition for women at Bowdoin. Women’s presence on campus would be claimed and emphasized on a whole new level, in the form of a small, brown house on College St.

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To The Root: Feminist Issue

The feminist issue of To the Root, from March 10, 1980, provides evidence of the type of consciousness raising and passionate activism that was taking place on Bowdoin’s campus during the early 1980s (Document CS, 62). The Afro-American Society, the Bowdoin Energy Research Group, the Bowdoin Women’s Association, Struggle and Change, and the Gay-Straight Alliance came together to raise awareness around feminism through this issue of To the Root.

The authors challenge conceptions of feminism and lesbianism, discuss sexism and the women’s movement, explore ways to make change, ask readers to think about male-centered language, and argue for breaking down gender imbalances and inequities. One article, “A Feminist Critique of a Liberal Arts Education” criticizes Bowdoin’s use of male-centered language, its exclusion of her-story in history classes, the scarcity of feminist books and magazines in the college library, and the dearth of women in the permanent and more powerful faculty positions.

This publication includes images as well as text. All of the images, from cartoons to drawings, are of naked woman. One image is a white woman in child’s pose with the caption “I Am a Woman Giving Birth to Myself.” Another features a black woman holding the emblem of the United Nations. These images propagate the idea of reclaiming women’s bodies, self-expression, rights, and history.

To the Root introduces the Women’s Resource Center, which was slated to open the following fall as an “educational tool for the entire community.” The publication shows the determination of Bowdoin’s early feminists to work in coalition with other campus groups to raise awareness around women’s issues.

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Rethinking Sex

Rethinking Sex: Anonymous accounts of and about sexual harassment at Bowdoin College, is a collection of student stories and opinions from 1987 (Document CS, 66). One imagines that women wrote the majority of the stories, as most describe heterosexual encounters between men and women, with men as the aggressors. Part of Rethinking Sex Week, the publication accompanied an open forum.

By 1987, women had been at Bowdoin for over fifteen years and the Women’s Resource Center had been open for seven years. However, this may have been one of the first times issues of sexual harassment were addressed so publically. The safe environment of the Women’s Resource Center provided community and may well have raised consciousness sufficiently that women found the courage to share their stories publically albeit anonymously. The variety of stories in Rethinking Sex shows the differing and contradictory perspectives on sex in the Bowdoin community in the 1980s.

The means of educating Bowdoin students on issues of sexual harassment or sexual assault through sharing of anonymous personal stories remains an important part of life at Bowdoin today. In the fall of 2009, a new performance became an annual part of first-year orientation. Speak about it originated from stories in Speak, a more modern version of Rethinking Sex. Rethinking Sex may have started a trend in educating the Bowdoin community around these issues. Speak and Speak about it are also important elements of the Women’s Resource Center’s role on campus today.

Women’s Resource Center Focus Group

This discussion brought together four Bowdoin women who all played important roles in establishing Bowdoin’s still vibrant and active Women’s Resource Center. Jan Brackett and Bridget Spaeth ’86 each served as directors for the WRC, and Linda Nelson ’83 and Laura Barnard ’83 were early members of the Women’s Resource Center Collective that founded the WRC in 1980. All four women share stories of triumph and love in the face of adversity and discrimination. Their discussion offers unique insight into what it was like to be a woman at Bowdoin in the late 70’s and early 80’s – the good, the bad, and the unexpected.

Audio: click title below to begin listening

Interview with Linda Nelson ’83, by Coral Sandler ’12

Claiming Space for Bowdoin Women: A Discussion with a founding member of the Women’s Resource Center, Linda Nelson ‘83

As one of the founding members of the Women’s Resource Center and the Gay Straight Alliance, Linda Nelson helped claim new spaces for Bowdoin women in the early 1980s. To hear about how she entered Bowdoin as an out lesbian, experienced active support and real harassment, and persistently worked for social change at Bowdoin (and in the world), listen to the audio.

Audio: click below to begin listening

Intriguing Pieces:

Time: 00:07:44
Quotation: “Somebody tried to burn it [the Women’s Resource Center] down at one point. Um, we did receive threatening phone calls kind of on a regular basis. Some of us were followed around campus.”

Time: 00:14:28
Quotation: “And I think what we realized was that especially with the fraternity structure in which you had this physical structure of houses, that women really needed a space here. So that’s where the idea for the Women’s Resource Center came from. Needed a space, needed a collection.”

Time: 00:24:53
Quotation: [Linda on the message of a lecture she attended by Audre Lord]“Stop feeling guilty about it [privilege]. You know, those of you who got a good education, who have the privilege of being white, who have the privilege of being educated get out there and do something and make a difference with that. And I firmly believe that and I think everybody that helped to found that Women’s Resource Center as a collective really, really believed that.”

Citation: I, Coral Sandler, interviewed Linda Nelson on Saturday, October 14, 2011, in the Nixon Lounge of Hawthorne Longfellow Library at Bowdoin College. We discussed Linda Nelson’s experience at Bowdoin as a student and founding members of the Women’s Resource Center.