Tash Mahnokaren
Staff Writer
Issues related to gender, sexual violence and sexual orientation permeate our everyday lives.
According to The National Coalition Against Domestic Violence, one in every four women will experience domestic violence in their lifetime.
While we may not be directly affected by these problems, it is hard to imagine that out of the women we encounter in our everyday lives, many are victims of gender related issues.
The Janet C. Anderson Gender Resource Center at Idaho State University serves as a safe haven to address and raise awareness on sensitive issues that are gender related. These range anywhere from issues of sexual orientation to domestic violence, birth control and education on building and maintaining healthy relationships.
The Gender Resource Center started in 1986 because the dean of student affairs at the time, Janet Anderson, wanted to start a center for women.
“We provide education and develop programs to teach students, faculty and staff about any kind of gender-related issues that may be going on in the community and on campus,” said Stephanie Richardson, the center’s assistant director, grant writer and administrator.
“Women’s centers in universities were common during this period, , said Richardson. “However, instead of women’s centers, gender centers were created.”
Today, empowerment through education remains at the heart of the center’s hopes for the ISU community.
Located in Gravely Hall, the center doesn’t merely seek to serve as an outlet for women looking for help or advice on these issues but also hopes to strengthen women collectively through education.
The center is funded primarily through student fees and grants.
The Gender Resource Center, exclusively serving the ISU community, also aspires to empower women with the proper skills to recognize potentially harming situations and educate them on various ways to approach them.
“We try and bring a positive spin to campus by training Green Dot,” said Richardson. “60 percent of the time there is a bystander witnessing a situation but only 15 percent of the time does someone step in to do something.”
Green Dot, funded through the Department of Health and Welfare, is a national bystander prevention program, where Green Dot-certified individuals, like Richardson, are funded to go out on campus and train students, faculty and staff on how to be proactive bystanders. Individuals are taught proper intervention techniques in potentially threatening situations.
The Gender Resource Center currently remains in the process of developing Green Dot, which was launched last semester.
“We also have an educational series where we do lunchtime talks,” said Richardson. “This takes place the first Wednesday of every month and we invite people in.”
These lunchtime talks that take place in the Diversity Resource Center can cover anything from matters of feminism, women’s health, the struggles of women through time and their complicity in moving forward as a nation.
One of the three lunchtime talks that will be held during the Spring 2014 semester, will show a film screening of “Makers,” a series about women who have had a positive impact on the progress of America, according to Richardson.
In celebration of Women’s History Month, the center will also be hosting a conference with the College of Arts and Letters. This conference will focus on gender and sexuality in everyday life.
“This will be the first academic conference here at ISU,” said Richardson.
It will give students who want to present their papers an opportunity to do so.
Beginning on March 3, the center will host an art show called “She’s Got My Back,” which will run through the rest of the month. The show will display art that represents women helping other women in recognizing and addressing gender and sexuality issues.
The Gender Resource Center will host a film series called “Lunafest,” which will consist of short films by women and about women.
According to Richardson, the Janet C. Anderson Gender Resource Center’s library also holds a variety of educational material on gender-related topics.
“We do anything that can help women, LGBTQ and any related issues through education,” said Richardson.
In moving forward with this program, the center hopes to get the ISU community more involved with the center’s events.
The center remains open to suggestions for new programming ideas that cater to the interests of what students are seeking education on, pertaining to gender- and sexuality-related issues.
“We are a community within a community,” said Jessica Milford, an intern at the Gender Resource Center. “We provide resources to the ISU community that would otherwise not be available if we weren’t here.”
