Women’s Center celebrates its 40th birthday

Events to come as Women’s Center celebrates International Women’s Day 

Maria Ly
Staff Writer

The Women’s Center celebrated their 40th birthday this past Wednesday with birthday cupcakes, bingo, music, and party favors. 

The Women’s Center first opened its doors on March 3, 1979 and has had many achievements from its educational events to its support system, they continue to uphold their mission statement of “fostering a healthy, safe, and engaging campus community”. 

Liz Steinborn-Gourley, the Interim Assistant Director of the Women’s Center said, “I think getting to be a part of it is my favorite memory of the Women’s Center so far. Knowing that there is a legacy of 40 years and that I get to contribute to that in some small way is just amazing.”

The Women’s Center has been there for so many students through their events, programs, and its creation of a safe space. 

Anarose Hart-Thomas, a member of the Women of Action Council at the Women’s Center stated, “I think the Women’s Center has really become kind of a safe space to talk to different kinds of people and really have conversations that you don’t typically have. There’s really no platform on campus that you can have conversations that we do here.”

The Women’s Center has helped students in small and big ways in educating students and offering a voice for them to speak out their opinions. Daisy Canamar-Cedillo agrees as she said, “Being part of the whole community I’ve learned a lot including about relationships, the LGBT community as well, about things I didn’t know, and I feel really good about that.”

Nimo Quadri stated, “They open up the office after hours so people can stay in there and hang out and stuff, and that’s really cool, and a lot of offices don’t do that. And it’s very inviting, when we have holidays they decorate the office and it’s very nice.”

The Women’s Center in lieu of their 40th birthday is also having other events to celebrate International Women’s Day. 

Among of them is Writing Herstory, Steiborn-Gourley said, “Students and administrators will be speaking. We’re having the original director of the Women’s Center coming and talking at the event. We’ll have a full spread of fancy appetizers and it will be more of a formal recognition of the time we had here.”

Another event the Women’s Center is hosting is International Women’s Day, Steinborn-Gourley stated, “In that event we’re going to have a speaker that’s going to talk about global feminism, there will be student performers who are going to dance, there will be poets, there will be an acting troupe and there’ll be a panel about feminism from the perspectives of current students.”

These events are both free! The Writing for Herstory event will be occurring on March 20 in CSU 253 from 4:30 p.m. to 6 p.m. and the International Women’s Day celebration will be held on March 21 in Ostrander Auditorium from 4 p.m. to 6 p.m. 

Steinborn-Gourley states, “It’s going to be endless and non-stop fun.”

Header photo by Jeremiah Ayodele | MSU Reporter.