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Candidate for Women's Center director holds second forum

Gloria Thomas, candidate for Director of the Carolina Women's Center, speaks at a forum on Monday afternoon
Gloria Thomas, candidate for Director of the Carolina Women's Center, speaks at a forum on Monday afternoon

Ooten is the associate director for the Women in Living and Learning program at the University of Richmond. During her presentation, Ooten said there is a prevalence of gender disparities on college campuses.

“While women make up that majority of undergraduate students, about 59 percent here at Carolina, deeply engrained gender disparities are unfortunately alive and well on our campuses and in our communities,” she said.

Ooten said one role women’s centers have is to teach students how to handle these disparities.

“They actively work to create spaces free of sexual violence and interpersonal violence,” she said.

“They ideally improve the campus climate for all women, and they administer mechanisms to report and monitor the status of differently situated women across campus.”

Ooten said another role is to educate students on the importance of inclusivity of women on and off campus.

She also said in order to guarantee the Women’s Center raises awareness on gender disparities and inclusivity of women, the center should teach students about feminism to bring about social change.

“I think women’s centers can use this be to incubators for social action. They can augment a formal feminist curriculum by educating a more collective campus body.”

Carol Tresolini, vice provost for academic initiatives, attended the forum to see how Ooten handled questions.

“The Women’s Center director reports to me so I have a huge stake in the choice of the Women’s Center director,” she said.

Margot Stein, a professor in the UNC School of Dentistry, said she thought Ooten had good plans for the Women’s Center.

“She has a lot of ideas and a breadth of vision that will handle global, local, community, state and national implications,” she said.

Ooten said although women’s studies lacks support from the state, she is confident UNC will provide the support needed to implement change.

“You do not have to mobilize the masses to make a lot of these changes. I think there is a lot of work to done but I’ve found you have strong institutional support for this work, and that really matters when you might not have strong support at the state level,” she said.

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