The Ohio Women's Association was recently created to encourage discussion and collaboration between women on campus. The next meeting is tenetatively planned to take place in the second week of spring semester.
With multiple organizations dedicated towards women’s advocacy, activism and support, one now has emerged to aim to bring them all together.
The Ohio University Women’s Association, which is currently not an official campus organization, attempts to provide a space for women of different groups to collaborate and create programming, with representation of marginalized perspectives.
In its second meeting held Monday evening, 19 people attended from organizations such as: Feminist Equality Movement, Blue Pencil Comedy, F--kRapeCulture, Hip-Hop Congress, Student Union, International Student Union, Student Senate and various commissions, ResHousing, VOX and the F-Word.
The meeting was lead mainly by Claire Chadwick, a junior studying sociology and women, gender and sexuality studies and co-founder of F--kRapeCulture, and Madison Koenig, commissioner of women’s affairs for Student Senate and a senior studying English. Chadwick and Koenig said they also worked with Liz Doyle, founder of Women in Business, as well as Shambrion Treadwell and Bobby Walker.
The plan is to have the meetings eventually split into two parts. The first part would be dedicated to organizational matters, and the second to talk education and issues to open up and spark conversation with new perspectives from various organizations that would ordinarily occur in isolated situations, Koenig said.
The hope is to bring together women’s groups across campus to work together towards a common cause of equality, education, or advocacy. The majority of the meeting was spent decided how to organize a governing board and committees. The group hopes to hold nominations and elections for positions in the spring semester.
The association wants to apply for SAC funding, which would mean that it would need to be a registered organization and have an advisor, a position that Patty Stokes, assistant professor of women's and gender and sexuality studies, said during the meeting she would be interested in taking. Also in the works are creating a constitution and finalizing a mission statement.
The current plan is to have a general meeting the second week of spring semester.
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