DAILY LOBO new mexico
Happy Halloween
The Independent Student Voice of UNM since 1895
wednesday October 31, 2012
WRC celebrates 40th anniversary by Megan Underwood news@dailylobo.com
Feminist activist Gloria Steinem said patriarchal religious institutions use baptisms to take the miracle of birth away from women. Steinem said the church perpetuates the idea that it is responsible for the birth of children in that babies are considered reborn through religious practices, such as baptism. “We’ve been dissuaded from really talking about it,” she said. “Its purpose is to take over the women who are giving birth.” Steinem was the keynote speaker for the 40th anniversary celebration of the UNM Women’s Resource Center and Women Studies Program. Before taking the stage, Steinem said she was very pleased to be a part of the celebration and that WRC and WMST are crucial to have on campus because they help promote wellbeing and cross-cultural understanding. “In a real sense, women studies, Native American Studies, African American studies, Asian American Studies, Gay and Lesbian studies — they’re all remedial studies,” she said. “So, one day we’ll be studying human history.” Steinem spoke on a wide array of topics including reproductive rights and health, domestic violence and
women in politics and education. She said it’s important for women to continue to fight for their rights and for their voices to be heard. “The biggest danger for all the movements of change is the notion that they’re over, that they’re in the past,” she said. Steinem said that issues such as equal pay are seen as social rather than political, which causes problems because it’s difficult to make consistent policies that are fair to women if the issues are not treated in a political manner. She said women make about 78 cents for every dollar a man makes, and that making women’s pay equal to men’s would help women support their families and help the economy. Steinem said that according to The Institute for Women’s Policy Research, equal pay would insert $200 billion into the economy and that the influx of money would create more jobs, because women would spend the money they earn. The celebration also recognized the founders and organizers of both WRC and WMST at UNM. Former director and one of the original founders of WMST Ann Nihlen said that when the program started in the 1970s, it existed in one room in Mesa Vista Hall. She said that organizing courses and events was difficult because the administration at the time
Ruby Santos / Daily Lobo Gloria Steinem speaks at the 40th anniversary celebration of the UNM Women’s Resource Center and Women Studies Program. Steinem said that equal pay for women would allow women to support their families and the economy. was not supportive. Nihlen said she and her colleagues were barred from teaching a course on lesbianism and organizing an all-female dance. She also said members of the department were threatened with violence and that there were drive-by shootings at the Women’s Center. “When Women Studies got in the building we were allowed in the basement,” she said. “We had almost
nothing. And out of that starting, building a program that we had no idea how to do.” Nihlen said that over the course of many years, the program gained the support it needed to succeed and now has large spaces in the Humanities Building and Mesa Vista Hall and offers both a major and minor to undergraduates. Gail Baker, the first coordinator of WMST, said she’s very proud
of the strides the program has made during the last 40 years. She said the first women studies course began in spring 1971 at the Free University, which provided free classes to students. She said it took a lot of very strong women to start the program and the WRC in the ‘70s, and that it will take strong women to continue them in the future. “Now, I hope that they keep going and growing,” she said.
Summit plans for zombies
GOING UP?
Security firm hosts apocalypse simulation by Julie Watson
The Associated Press
Jorge Gajon / Daily Lobo A football player was decapitated by the elevator doors in Mesa Vista Hall in the 1970s. It is rumored that the player’s ghost haunts the building, but Department of History Chairperson Charlie Steen says the building is just old. See full story on Page 10.
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Daily Lobo volume 117
issue 51
SAN DIEGO — Move over vampires, goblins and haunted houses, this kind of Halloween terror aims to shake up even the toughest warriors: An untold number of so-called zombies are descending on a counterterrorism summit attended by hundreds of Marines, Navy special ops, soldiers, police, firefighters and others to prepare them for their worst nightmares. “This is a very real exercise, this is not some type of big costume party,” said Brad Barker, president of Halo Corp, a security firm hosting the Oct. 31 training demonstration during the summit at a 44acre Paradise Point Resort island on a San Diego bay. “Everything that will be simulated at this event has already happened; it just hasn’t happened all at once on the same night. But the training is very real, it just happens to be the bad guys we’re having a little fun with.”
Hundreds of military, law enforcement and medical personnel will observe the Hollywood-style production of a zombie attack as part of their emergency response training. In the scenario, a VIP and his personal detail are trapped in a village and surrounded by zombies when a bomb explodes. The VIP is wounded and his team must move through the town while dodging bullets and shooting back at the invading zombies. At one point, some members of the team are bitten by zombies and must be taken to a field medical facility for decontamination and treatment. “No one knows what the zombies will do in our scenario, but quite frankly no one knows what a terrorist will do,” Barker said. “If a law enforcement officer sees a zombie and says, ‘Freeze, get your hands in the air!’ What’s the zombie going to do? He’s going to moan at you. If someone on PCP or some see Zombies PAGE 3
TODAY
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