American Nights review Page 10
WWW.THEOAKLEAFNEWS.COM Issue 4, Vol. CXXXIII, March 9, 2015
Women’s history month From a small town, to the nation, to the world Estefany Gonzalez, Jarrett Rodriguez, Domanique Crawford Features Editor, Editor-in-chief, Opinion Editor.
This year marks the 35th anniversary of Women’s History Month. The 2015 theme celebrates the ways women’s history has become woven into the fabric of our national story. “Women’s history is women’s right,” proclaimed Dr. Gerda Lerner (19202013), historian, author and professor, who created the first program to offer a graduate degree in women’s history at Sarah Lawrence College, where the movement to create Women’s National History Month mobilized. Discouraged by the lack of recognition of women throughout history, Lerner, chair of the Women’s History Institute at Sarah Lawrence College at the time, held a 15 day conference cosponsored by the Women’s Action Alliance and the Smithsonian Institute. National representatives from 43 women’s organizations attended the conference, w h i c h highlighted women’s roles throughout history and built a curriculum concentrating on those exploits. Amongst the
Classroom Etiquette From Chatty Cathy to Texting Tom, these classmates need a 101 lesson on classroom etiquette.
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courtesy of Sheshistory.com
Molly MacGregor and the women of the National Women’s History Project joing the first parade for the celebration of Women’s History Week in Sonoma County in 1979.
attendees was the National Women’s History Project (NWHP). In 1980 Molly Murphy MacGregor, Mary Ruthsdotter, Maria Cuevas, Paula Hammett and Bette Morgan founded NWHP in Santa Rosa. NWHP’s goal at the conference was to spread the success of the Sonoma County’s first women’s history week to a national platform and encourage all of the other organizations to do the same in their communities. MacGregor was a teacher at the Santa Rosa Junior College’s Petaluma Campus when she discovered something disturbing in the school library. “Women in my class discovered that there were five or six books, at the most, on women in the school library,” she said. Most books had not been checked out in five to 15 years. She went to the administrative bodies of the Sonoma County schools a n d petitioned to institute a women’s history week on the school calendar, seeing the need for women to be recognized. “If we had a specific week, it would give focus to women and women’s history and it would also give motivation and encouragement to talk about women,”
MacGregor said. MacGregor and the other women in the NWHP chose the week of March 8 because nothing else was going on that week and they wanted it to be as inclusive as possible. “We were including all women of all cultures; women who work inside the home, women who work outside the home, women’s history was about all women,” MacGregor said. In 1978 and 1979, Sonoma County celebrated the first Women’s History Week. In 1979, MacGregor took the idea to a women’s history conference, where prestigious women gathered from all over. It was here that MacGregor asked all those women to bring the idea of Women’s History Week home to their schools and communities, so they could push the idea to a national level. A year later, the idea reached the top of the chain. “In 1980 I received a call from the White House telling me that President Carter was going to issue a resolution, a presidential message, calling on the American People to push for the contributions of American women during the week of March 8,” MacGregor said. This led to the first nationally recognized Women’s History Week. “The National Women’s History Project [NWHP] was founded to insure that these would continue and there would be resources, there would be materials and a unifying theme, just a Continued on page 8
Being in the moment
Return to triumph from injury
Craig Foster, Santa Rosa Junior College English professor, talks about his life, rebirth and daily habits for living in the moment. Continued on page 10 6 FEATURES, Page
Santa Rosa Junior College ice hockey defenseman Niklis Nisja returns from severe knee injury to help capture the PCHA championship. Continued on page 1013 SPORTS, Page
Student’s rally at the capitol Matthew Koch and Luke Heslip Staff Writer and Assitant Opinion Editor A host of approximately 300 California community college students took to the Capitol Building in Sacramento March 2 in a rally and impromptu march for legislative and institutional action on student supplications, educational security and affirmed student influence among them. Dubbed March in March, the rally has been an annual tradition in Sacramento since the 2008 financial crisis, drawing considerably larger crowds in past years when budgetary cuts were more acute, said Joshua Pinaula, SRJC associated students (AS) president, who attended two previous rallies. “This event was meant to be a smaller thing,” Pinaula said. “Students united, will never be divided!” chanted from the throng of delegates from the 112 community colleges in California. A dozen or so tents stood erect on the veranda at the base of the Capitol Building, sporting banners of various student groups, including the Spectrum Caucus, an LGBTQ advocacy coalition, and the Black Student Caucus. The rally began at 9 a.m. with students brandishing signs reading, “Power to the people,” “Don’t cut our future” and, “Money 4 war but not education?” The Student Senate for California Community Colleges (SSCCC) orchestrated the rally. Its president, Omar Paz Jr., is also the SRJC student trustee and former AS president. “We are the largest college student constituency in the country and we are very underserved,” Paz said. His objective for the event was to engage students in advocacy at the capitol. In a speech addressing the crowd of students, educators and advisors congregated at the Capitol building, Paz said, “As community college students we have 2.1 million constituents, we have 112 schools. We are the largest college system in the country.” The SRJC delegation had an audience with California State Assemblymen, Mark Levine, who represents Marin County and
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Photo courtesy of Robin Enfield
The Student Senate for California Community Colleges holds a rally on the steps of the capitol.