By Antoine SanchezContributor
The Women’s Resource Center on campus is preparing for its 6thannual high school conference, in which they will target two groupsthat members say haven’t had enough attention from the university –women with disabilities and women with drug-related problems.
The goal of this year’s conference is to recruit “marginalized”women, such as teen mothers who drop out of high school and women whoare in shelters or have disabilities, WRC chairwoman Meghan Blancosaid. Close to 150 schools in San Diego and Riverside counties havebeen invited to attend.
For a second time, the keynote speaker will be Pat Washington, aprofessor in the department of women’s studies — a former teenmother who plans to address issues pertaining to today’s teenmothers.
“I will stress that motherhood does not signal the end of a girl’seducational opportunities and that education remains one of the mostimportant tools one can have in the United States today — that it isessential to continuing growth and self-development and that itsignificantly increases the choices one has in life, as well as thequality of life itself,” Washington said.
The group has invited guest speakers from organizations such asthe American Indian Health Center, Planned Parenthood, DisabledStudent Services and welfare programs. Targeted issues will includeself-advocacy, domestic violence, rape, HIV, pre-natal nutrition andself-defense.
The organization believes that women, in general, are not takeninto account as they should be, especially on campus, since the statedoes not fund the WRC as other California State universities and andthe UC system do, Blanco said.
“Despite the fact that the campus is the largest and the firstschool in the CSU system and in the nation to have a department ofwomen’s studies, we have to depend on advocates and certifiedvolunteer counselors,” Blanco said. “It is important that the schooltakes steps in establishing some sort of funding, because it isdifficult to do it all by ourselves.”
The organization has helped many women work on schoolpolicy-making and deal with women’s issues. The WRC has strengthenednetworking skills for many women by participating with otherorganizations, schools and programs, WRC member Cheryl Burkey said.
“The WRC could do more in terms of outreach because many peoplehave no idea that the center exists. But when someone finds it, thereare excellent resources such as books, pamphlets and people to talkto,” Burkey said.
Besides the high school conference, the WRC is organizing eventsfor Women’s History Month in March, and other activities in April.
The WRC plans to invite guest speakers to talk about problemswomen face such as disability and race issues. This includes itsannual “Take Back The Night” event, a march against violence towardwomen.
For these events to occur, the center relies on the help ofcommunity members, professors and the Student Recruitment RetentionBoard, Blanco said.
This year the cast of “The Vagina Monologues” helped theorganization by giving them a donation.
Even though this event is targeted for women, men are also welcometo assist the high school conference, from 9:30 a.m. to 1:15 p.m.March 22 in Aztec Center.
