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April 25, 2018
In This Issue:
I News
NC Piimaries
Stunt Results
Hillsborough Street
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A&E
Review: A Quiet Place
Review: Moiie Antoinette
Sinfonietto/Flute
’ DonceWotks Concett
I Editorials
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Pixoi's Coco and
Representotion
Letter to Graduating
Seniars
Cartoon
Brothers in Our Sisterhood
Mimi Mays, Staff Writer
Anyone could recite the
objective of Meredith College:
to educate women and prepare
them for the world. As Meredith
women we enter society confident,
inquisitive, Strong, and armed with
a college degree. We 1,685 female
undergrade live and breathe the
Meredith sisterhood, trusting in
all the glory a women’s college
will provide. The narrative of this
sisterhood is almost routine, and
though it empowers us, by nature
it leaves some people behind—our
male students.
Male students at Meredith
can exist in two ways: members
of Meredith graduate programs, or
undergraduate students from one
of the five Cooperating Raleigh
Colleges (NC State University,
William Peace University, Saint
Augustine’s University, Shaw
University, and Wake Tech
Community College). This is likely
a surprise to many, probably
because Meredith hasn’t hosted
any male undergraduates in quite
a while. But any student from a
CRC can enroll in a course at
Meredith, provided that course
isn’t available at his or her own
institution or isn’t offered at a
preferred time. To President Jo
Allen, the CRC program is of great
value: “It’s a great way to test
other institutional environments or
other subject matters, and a good
way to just have a different kind
of experience.’’ She likens it to
studying abroad...“just in your own
backyard.’’ As the 50th anniversary
of the CRC program approaches.
Dr. Allen hopes that we’ll be
able to increase the visibility of
the program and its value and
welcome more students from other
colleges—including men who
may be curious about a women’s
college. “The older you are, the
more you have to unlearn,’’ says
Dr. Allen; “so, the advantage of
younger men being on our campus
is an opportunity to learn in a
culture of women, when these
men’s ideas are not necessarily
so hardened and rigid.” But, learn
what? ,
As women, we have
plenty of opportunities to learn
and work in predominantly male
environments, but how many
female-oriented settings exist
to which men can be exposed?
That’s how Meredith’s platform
is so unique. A male student in
a marketing class, for example,
learns how to recognize (and
perhaps even represent) a
woman’s point of view in a
marketing campaign. A male
student in the School of Business,
for example, learns how fo
respect women’s career paths
and leadership abilities. “A lot of
us think we’re very empathetic,
that we can always imagine what
it’s like to be in somebody eise’s
shoes, and hopefully we can,” Dr.
Allen muses, “but it surely does
help sometimes to be immersed
in a culture, to really understand
the cultural differences and make
adjustments.”
Graduate student Allan
Avellanet’s journey to a Meredith
post-bac program initially had
little to do with our all-female
environment; like many students
of many ages, he was drawn
to our institution for the close
student-to-faculty relationships,
small class sizes, and the industry
success of the program graduates.
However, since spending time
on our campus, conversing and
learning among women has taught
him humility; how to be cognizant
of different ideas, backgrounds,
and thought processes; and how
to have relationships with women
that are more substantial that what
he’d traditionally learned in how he
was raised. “If you’re raised with
strong-looking male figures and
by women who don’t hold similar
positions of power, it can probably
play into the subconscious thought
of men being better,” or at least
more powerful, “than women.”
Avellanet modestly cites some
bad habits he picked up from
his father—or, more accurately,
chose not to pick up—and some
of the less favorable Southern
conservative customs and
attitudes gently ingrained into his
upbringing. Now, at Meredith, the
narrative has shifted: his peers are
women, his mentors are women,
and even his favorite professor
is a woman who, in his opinion,
unquestionably lives up to the
“Meredith Strong” slogan. When
asked to describe the lessons he’s
learned from being at Meredith,
he worried his responses were
too cliche, but insisted they were
surprisingly accurate: learning
the patience to hear others
out, respecting others without
automatic prejudice, improving his
relationship with his wife, and, in
all sincerity, getting a better sense
of what it feels like to be a minority.
He says, “I’ve learned how not
being the majority actually does
have its disadvantages,” both by
being a literal minority as a man at
a women’s college, and by being
privy to real and unmistakable
obstacles to women that everyone
can learn to overcome.
Every experience a
student has at Meredith is a
teachable moment, and many of
these teachable moments are
lessons that are truly vital ones
to learn: how to respect women,
how to listen to women, how to
value women, and how to build a
community that does those things,
too. Meredith, and all women’s
colleges, are more relevant
than ever in their ability to build
a better foundation for a more
equal society by educating Strong
women and men.
Umoja Means Unity
Nikki Wertz, Staff Writer
I’d rather be telling you of
the wonderful all-female village
of Umoja from the Umoja itself.
Instead I’m writing about it from my
dorm room. With the many things
(both good and bad) that have
been happening in our country in
the recent year, I yearn to take a
pilgrimage in search of life and
knowledge in their rawest form. No
commentator, no propaganda. On
this pilgrimage, I need to stop in
the village of Umoja, an all-female
village, located in the Samburu
district of northern Kenya.
Umoja was established by a group
of Samburu women, including
its chief and matriarch, Rebecca
Lolosoli, in 1990 in response
to local British soldiers raping
more than a thousand women in
the area. Under the patriarchal
Samburu tribe, women who are
victims of rape are often beaten by
their husbands for “dishonoring”
the family and, along with their
children, were often thrown out
of their homes. More than two
decades later, the Samburu tribe
has changed little in regards
to the culture’s treatment of its
women. The patriarchy is known
for its practice of female genital
mutilation for centuries. Once a
girl has undergone circumcision,
she is seen as marriageable.
As a result, girls as young as
twelve are being married off to
men more than twice their age.
Because Samburu men pay a
dowry to his potential wife’s family,
a wife is seen as property of her
husband. Samburu wives are
sometimes abused and/or sold
by her husband. In fact, it likely a
Samburu man will not be punished
for the killing of one or more of his
wives if he has paid the dowry of
livestock.
Umoja has understandably
become a refuge for abused
women seeking to escape the
Samburu patriarchy for a better life
for them and their children. Google
Umoja now and you’d likely see
beautiful dark-skinned women in
brightly colored clothes and beads
or a collection of huts surrounded
by grassland. Some of you may
even question the idea of a refuge
in Africa. According to its residents,
life is good in Umoja. The women
are allowed to work and care for
their families in peace. A regular
day involves tending to livestock,
caring for children, and making
jewelry that will be sold to tourists
travelling to and from the Samburu
National Park. Children also
attend the small school, which was
funded with ten percent of each
woman’s earnings.
What I admire most is the
extent at which these women go in
protecting one another. They live
by the no-men rule, attacking a
majority of men with sticks with the
exception of lovers, male workers,
and a few unconventionally
(cont. in the News section)