Gender Council serves as forum for student input

On Thursday, March 3 the Gender Council held its first meeting. Made up of students, faculty and staff, the Council is facilitated by student co-chair Lark Mulligan ’11 and faculty co-chair Karin Hanta, director of the Chellis House.

Mulligan says the Council hopes to centralize its movements on campus and focus them on concrete initiatives that will challenge privilege and restructure power relations at the College.

“We want to push beyond ‘tolerance’ and challenge the meaning of acceptance and belonging,” said Mulligan.

The main reason for creating the Gender Council was to provide a consolidated and permanent space for its continued mission, initiatives and conversations. Since a large turnover of students occurs each year, there is a lot of dependence on the faculty and staff to sustain it in the long run.

“This is a Council that has the potential to change the way students, staff and faculty interact with their peers and administrators,” said co-founder of the Council Elizabeth King ’13. “It’s a chance to influence campus climate and actually enact concrete change.”

King says that passion around gender issues often fizzles out because students do not feel as if they have a forum where they can be taken seriously.

"We believe this Council offers a radical space that has the potential to transform the way our campus’ inhabitants view and interact with social justice and grassroots activism,” she said.

The Gender Council is structured around small issue-based subcommittees that focus on a variety of issues. Thus far, the subcommittees created have dealt with alternate housing for first-years, the accessibility of the Parton Health Center for students of different races and gender identities and providing resources for students whose background information doesn’t match up with the College’s current database structure.

The Council is neither a student organization nor does it work within the administration. Mulligan says the decision not to institutionalize the Council is significant in defining its dynamic on campus and the amount of influence it can have in implementing change.

“We now have the opportunity to push administrators and policymakers in ways that we would not be able to as representatives of the institution,” she said. “We’re not representing Middlebury College, we’re representing the people — the college community — and we’re here for the interests of that community.”

Viveka Ray-Mazumder ’11 — another co-founder — says the Council hopes to collaborate with the administration and student organizations and welcomes people from the community who have an individual interest in getting involved.

“We have a blog and e-mail, and all of our meetings are open,” said Ray-Mazumder. “If they’re not comfortable with coming to meetings they can communicate with us in person. We’re trying to be really transparent.”

The Council will meet today, Thursday, March 24 at 4:30 pm in Axinn 104.