This academic year alone, the song “Blurred Lines” was struck from the Marching 110’s set list; Student Senate is holding sexual harassment workshops after a questionable tweet from its president; and a new group has sprung up on campus to fight rape culture.
But Ohio University’s students aren’t the only ones squaring off against sexism.
Jenny Hall-Jones, OU’s dean of students, wrote an article titled, “Sexism and Gender Roles as a Dean of Students: The Good, The Bad and The Ugly” after The Student Affairs Feature, a blog for student affairs professionals, approached her over the summer about writing a piece. Those in charge of the blog told her she could write about whatever she wanted.
At the same time, Hall-Jones and Vice President for Student Affairs Ryan Lombardi had been discussing her year as interim dean of students last year. The two compared their experiences as the dean of students.
As Hall-Jones had served as the assistant dean of students while Lombardi was the dean, she was able to recall how students had treat ed him.
“I had made this observation, how I felt like this has been differ ent,” she said.
For example, at the 2012 Bobcat Student Orientation, rather than us ing the Twitterfall to post comments on the speech she was giving, stu dents commented on her outfits and posted sexually explicit thoughts.
Those differences, Hall-Jones said, weren’t all negative.
During her time as the interim dean last year, the dean of students’ office saw an influx of students reaching out because of mental health issues and homesickness.
“It’s been something that I’d ob served and thought other people would want to talk about,” Hall- Jones said. “The great thing is I’m getting a lot of response from it.”
Hall-Jones has heard from other female deans of students saying she has given a voice to something they have experienced as well. Some OU faculty members have asked permis sion to use the article in classes, she said.
“If it helps people contextualize people’s experiences and encour ages people to talk about gender as perception and sexism as it still ex ists today for women, that’s great,” Hall-Jones said.
After the first week, the article clocked about 4,297 visits and was read by 3,843 individuals. It was shared on Facebook 579 times and on Twitter 89 times. Hall-Jones said she has been told the article has been one of the most popular on The Student Affairs Feature site.
But Hall-Jones isn’t alone in her experiences. Sexism happens every where and higher education is not exempt from it, said Susanne Diet zel, director of the Women’s Center.
“You could argue that the same things that we see in the large social world that are sexist will also surface here,” she said.
Women have made great strides in the last 100 years, but some insti tutions like higher education have been slow to catch up.
“It’s very much part of the tra dition of higher education, which traditionally has been male-cen tered,” Dietzel said. “If you look at the numbers of professors you’ll see very clearly that when you look to full(-time) professors at this univer sity, only 20 percent of them will be women, and that is a number that hasn’t changed much since the ’70s.”
Based on the 2012-13 Annual Re port on the Economic Status of the Profession, OU has 157 male profes sors and only 53 female professors. Only 25 percent of the full-time pro fessors are women.
There are a total of 438 full-time male faculty members at OU, in cluding professors, associate pro fessors and assistant professors. In comparison, there are only 225 full-time female faculty members.
It’s not just the numbers employed that see a gap. The average salary for male professors is $106,000; for their female counterparts, it’s $96,000.
While there are more male faculty members, the national percentage of students attending college is 42 percent male and 58 percent female, according to statistics from the De partment of Education.
As of fall 2012, OU had 11,052 fe male and 10,672 male undergradu ate students. That breaks down to 50.9 percent female and 49.1 percent male, according to the Ohio Univer sity Fact Book.
And for those students planning a career in education, the warnings are already coming.
Nina De Salvo, a junior studying adolescent integrated language arts education, said that female educa tion students are indirectly told that they will be treated differently than males.
“We get lectured about how we dress before we’re sent into the class rooms; sleeves and nothing tight and no hint of cleavage for the purposes of how we represent the university and also because we are told young men can’t focus on anything else if we don’t follow those rules,” said De Salvo, who will be teaching high school students.
At first, De Salvo said she was annoyed with what she was being told, but then remembered how the younger and more attractive female teachers were treated by her male classmates during her own days in high school. Being subjected to the same treatment from future male students is something she worries about, she said.
Lance Poston is a Ph.D. candidate in history at OU; he is also an in structor in the women’s and gender studies department, and the only male in the department’s core fac ulty. He said he has not experienced sexism from his colleagues, but does acknowledge that some people might not agree with him being a WGS instructor.
“I think there are schools of thought and different academic communities that think that it’s not necessarily a man’s place to be teach ing these things, but I see women’s and gender studies as being part of the greater umbrella that includes so many other things,” Poston said.
For Poston, “other things” include sexism, racism, ageism, the history of the feminist and LGBT and Civil Rights movements.
Hall-Jones wanted to make sure her article said that sexism affects everybody, she said.
“I feel like I was open to basically saying men are affected by this too,” she said. “Ryan (Lombardi), when he was the dean of students, still had a male stereotype. If people weren’t coming to him to help, that’s a prob lem.”
It’s important to remember, Hall- Jones added, that gender discrimi nation extends outside the Athens bubble.
“It still affects everybody, but there is a culture here and every where and it’s definitely not specific to Ohio University,” Hall-Jones said.
Dietzel said she agreed that sex ism is not exclusive to OU, but added that it seems to be a growing prob lem.
“Obviously we are struggling with sexism at this university right now,” Dietzel said. “We had a student body president who tweeted something rather sexist. I’m so glad Dr. Hall- Jones wrote about her experience as a dean and the ways in which she was treated by some of her male stu dents.”
Dietzel said the university has the power to take a stand against sexism and sexist behaviors.
“We are an institution where we actually empower our students to enter consensual relationships be cause we know how big the problem of sexual assault is on our campus,” Dietzel said.
While there seems to be steps tak en in the right direction, Hall-Jones said there is still progress to be made.
“There are just so many exam ples of a culture that needs to still change.”
md781510@ohio.edu
@MariaDeVito13
