Board creates focus groups on women's issues, concerns
Colleen McCarthy
Assistant News Editor
Focus groups designed to ask students what kind of programming they want to see surrounding issues of women's sexuality, health and violence against women have not generated as much participation as the administration hoped for, reported Linda Timm, vice president of student affairs to the Saint Mary's Board of Governance.
"We decided to have these focus groups because of the dialogue that began surrounding the `Vagina Monologues' and we wanted to continue that dialogue on issues of women's sexuality, health and violence against women. We wanted to get their thoughts, suggestions and ideas," said Timm.
About 345 students were selected randomly from all four classes at Saint Mary's and given an invitation to participate in the groups. As of Monday, of a possible 145 students who could have attended sessions so far, only seven students have attended.
"We wanted to target the broadest context of students we could get and I would like to see a larger number of students attend the remaining sessions," said Timm.
Timm added that noontime sessions are also being held allowing students who did not receive the original invitations to sign up and attend.
Once the information from the sessions is gathered and the final session has been held, Timm, along with a group of five other individuals from the College, including one student, will meet to look over the data. They hope to determine common themes that surfaced repeatedly to determine what direction to take with programming.
"I'm stumped as to how else to get people to attend the sessions," said Timm.
After a discussion last week regarding whether the Board would recognize the Notre Dame Student Players as a Saint Mary's club, the Board invited Lindsay Landvogt of the Saint Mary's Thespians Unplugged Club to offer her insights regarding recognition of the Notre Dame theater group.
Board members raised concerns at the last meeting that the Saint Mary's club was approved last fall and that recognizing the Notre Dame club could take away from participants in the Saint Mary's group.
"We are still such a young club and are trying to get our feet planted and it's hard to get people involved," said Landvogt. "I hate to say it, but if Saint Mary's students see there is a similar club at Notre Dame, they might be more likely to join that club instead of ours."
On the other hand, Landvogt said that recognizing the Notre Dame club would provide other opportunities in addition to those offered by Thespians Unplugged.
Thespians Unplugged serves as a club for Saint Mary's students, especially those in the theater department who support performances at Saint Mary's and attend performances together off-campus.
"I can't predict what approving the Notre Dame club would do to our group," said Landvogt.
The Board tabled making a decision on further action until the April 23 Board meeting.
In other news:
u The Executive Board of BOG discussed creating a grant system for co-sponsorships because the Board is approached for money so frequently from various groups, said Michelle Nagle, student body president.
The co-sponsorships will be divided into four categories: service, academic/education, charity and campus programming.
"Having these four categories with a designated range of funding will make our job easier and help without consistency and credibility when it comes to giving co-sponsorships," said Nagle.
The system will not go into place until the fall.
u A retreat will be held on Sept. 8 to bring together officers of various campus organizations to try to create more collaboration in scheduling of various events, said Timm.
"We've struggled a lot with having lots of events going on at the same time and trying to get students to attend the events is tough," said Timm.
"If we bring together all of these student organizations, hopefully we can develop some sort of collaborative effort so that the groups can pool their resources of time, people, and financial resources so that the groups can program with each other, not against each other."
All News Stories for Tuesday, April 10, 2001
