Administrators ask: What would a UGA women's center look like?

A group of women’s studies students recently handed a petition to University of Georgia President Jere Morehead. The petition called for the establishment of a women’s center.

The barrier to building any such entity, though, is that the lack of a concrete concept.

UGA’s two top administrators say they are not opposed in principle to a women’s center on campus, but they wonder exactly what role such a center would perform.

“It’s not as straightforward as you might think. You find very little consensus on this,” said Morehead, who directed UGA administrators to investigate the question of a women’s center.

Though many universities have something they call a women’s center, they differ greatly in what they do, said Pamela Whitten, UGA’s provost and senior vice president for academic affairs.

“We’re looking at it. Typically, they are something very, very specific,” she said, citing the examples of several universities.

At Michigan, for instance, the women’s center is an interdisciplinary academic unit; at Vanderbilt, it focuses on issues such as body image and sexual health; and at Missouri, it’s a kind of lounge, she said.

“They’re all something different and something specific,” she said.

“You have to be careful,” Morehead said.

Administrators must choose between building buildings and building programs, he said.

Last September, Whitten and Morehead announced a “women’s resources initiative,” which included creating a kind of virtual women’s center by collecting a wide range of resources under the umbrella of a single web page.

In carrying out the initiative, administrators found that UGA offers many services for women, which numerous departments and units handle, Whitten said. She shared a list of more than three dozen such services, including personal safety training by UGA police, the University Health Center Women’s Clinic and its rape and sexual assault hotlines, and career resources for women at the UGA Career Center. In addition, women can take advantage of non-UGA services such as Project Safe, a group dedicated to ending domestic abuse and protecting its victims.

The Women’s Resources web page (www.women.uga.edu) “highlights women’s services, organizations, programs and events across campus. It will provide a hub for safety information, community support and advocacy for women,” according to the university’s announcement of the women’s resources initiative.

Until the question of a brick and mortar UGA women’s center resolves, it’s clear that campus women have a virtual world of resources to utilize in the meantime.

Follow education reporter Lee Shearer at www.facebook.com/LeeShearerABH or https://twitter.com/LeeShearer.

Administrators ask: What would a UGA women"s center look like?