{"id":19,"date":"2011-11-28T18:08:23","date_gmt":"2011-11-28T18:08:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/researchbdev.wpengine.com\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/?page_id=19"},"modified":"2011-12-08T15:51:23","modified_gmt":"2011-12-08T15:51:23","slug":"the-womens-resource-center","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/the-womens-resource-center\/","title":{"rendered":"Women&#8217;s Resource Center"},"content":{"rendered":"<figure id=\"attachment_874\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-874\" style=\"width: 300px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"size-full wp-image-874 \" title=\"Women\u2019s Resource Center at Bowdoin College\" src=\"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/files\/2011\/11\/womens-resource-center-bowdoin.jpg\" alt=\"Women\u2019s Resource Center at Bowdoin College\" width=\"300\" height=\"200\" \/><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-874\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Women\u2019s Resource Center at Bowdoin College<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p>Nine years after the start of coeducation, Bowdoin gave women students a house to call their own. <a href=\"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/category\/womens-resource-center\/\">This section explores the opening and early years of the Women\u2019s Resource Center<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>In the fall of 1980, the <a href=\"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/category\/womens-resource-center\/\">Women\u2019s Resource Center<\/a> (WRC) opened at 24 College Street. This little brown house was to serve as the new headquarters of the Bowdoin Women\u2019s Association (BWA), as a wider social space, as a dorm for ten women, and as a home for a collection of materials by and about women. The small brown house on College Street became a designated safe space for Bowdoin women on campus &#8211; something that had, in a variety of ways, been missing since co-education began.<\/p>\n<p>Over the years, the women of the BWA and the Women\u2019s Resource Center Collective worked to educate and build community around women\u2019s issues. These women claimed space for themselves on campus by making their voices heard. Distributing <a title=\"Bowdoin Women\u2019s Association Handbook\" href=\"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/womens-resource-center\/bowdoin-womens-association-handbook\/\">informational handbooks<\/a> for Bowdoin women, holding alternative educational opportunities, building up the center\u2019s library, publishing social activism publications, working in coalition with other progressive groups on campus, bringing singer and activist Holly Near to campus, and issuing a <a title=\"Rethinking Sex\" href=\"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/womens-resource-center\/rethinking-sex\/\">brochure of anonymous sexual harassment stories<\/a> were just a few of the ways these women spoke up in the first years of the Center.<\/p>\n<p>Other students on campus did not always appreciate these women\u2019s concerns or advocacy. Women at the Center received harassing phone calls, stalking scares, written attacks in the college newspaper, and one kerosene-rag attempt to set fire to the little brown house. Nevertheless, they prevailed, and over the years the WRC has continued to provide safe space for female students, queer students, and students seeking a variety of alliances with other students and groups.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Nine years after the start of coeducation, Bowdoin gave women students a house to call their own. This section explores the opening and early years of the Women\u2019s Resource Center. In the fall of 1980, the Women\u2019s Resource Center (WRC) opened at 24 College Street. This little brown house was to serve as the new [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":874,"parent":0,"menu_order":7,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","template":"","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-19","page","type-page","status-publish","has-post-thumbnail","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/19\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/874"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/research.bowdoin.edu\/forty-years-the-history-of-women-at-bowdoin\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}