Notes from the Desk Where the ladies at?

Author: Grace Duggan

After several years working for the The Middlebury Campus as a staff writer, photographer and editor, I think I can safely say that our campus newspaper is certainly no "Old Boys Club". Looking at our Opinions section, however, there is an appalling lack of female contributors to what is typically one of the more widely-read parts of the paper.

Last year The Campus put out 24 issues, along with a special April Fools' Day edition. Each issue included columns, letters to the editor, cartoons and op-eds (including "Notes From the Desk," an opinion piece written by a different editorial board member each week). There was also an online poll featuring the opinions of students on hard-hitting issues like "What do you think about Cake as the Spring Concert?" and "Where is the best place to spend your Spring Break?" Given that the trio of students featured in each web poll were approached to participate and also that they never had more than two published sentences a piece, I have excluded them from my look at the lack of balance between male and female voices in Opinions.

For the 2007-2008 academic year, females were overwhelmingly outnumbered by males in Opinions. This is ridiculous when one remembers that Middlebury's student body is typically an even split. For starters, there was no regular female columnist over the course of the entire year. Women authored only 17 percent of last year's columns and op-eds, and almost a third of those were jointly submitted with one or two male writers. Breaking that statistic down even further, one third of the females were either parents or Middlebury employees, bringing the percentage of published female Middlebury students down to a whopping 10 percent of all of the columns and op-eds written for the entire year. Out of the few published letters to the editor written by females, almost 40 percent of them were co-authored with at least one male. It may not sound like much to say that females were completely absent from the Opinions section for four issues last year, but that's almost 20 percent of the paper. Oftentimes the only female in the section with more than 250 words to her name was the editor who wrote that issue's "Notes From the Desk," a requirement for nearly every editor on staff at some point during the year. Even so, female editors were outnumbered almost two to one by their male counterparts, despite the fact that the editorial board was split nearly 50/50 last year.

While I recognize that The Campus could not run every received submission, blame falls not on Opinions editors but on a campus environment that potentially discourages vocal women. The March 2008 report from Middlebury's Task Force on the Status of Women noted that alcohol and males dominated Middlebury's social scene, but I would also say that males dominate many outlets for expression at the College, including, the Opinions section. The report notes that students have different classroom experiences based on their sex, but fails to mention possible manifestations of said differences, stating that 93 percent of females reported feeling safe and respected in the classroom. I'm all about feeling safe and respected, but what about encouraged? Women are often criticized for being too vocal because it goes against gender stereotypes that value submissiveness and passivity. Is Middlebury an environment where the voicing of opinions from men and women is equally encouraged and facilitated, be it in the classroom, at a post-lecture discussion or in the newspaper? I'm not so sure. Maybe in some areas it is, but it certainly isn't showing in the Opinions section. After four issues this semester, female columnists and op-ed contributors are outnumbered 2:1. I applaud the work of Kate Lupo '10 and Leslie Lim '10 as columnists this year, but I urge undergraduate women - and the student body in general - to submit their views to this strikingly unbalanced section of the newspaper.