RJ Wolcott

Lansing State Journal

UPDATE: The story now includes a joint statement released Tuesday by the Associated Students of Michigan State University and the Council of Graduate Students on the university's decision to open the Women's Study Lounge to both genders as well as the closing of the Women's Resource Center.

EAST LANSING - A few pieces of furniture are all that remain of Michigan State University’s Women’s Resource Center.

The center, once located on the third floor of the MSU Union, was dissolved earlier this year to form MSU's new WorkLife office. The new office caters specifically to staff seeking information on resources or ongoing programs.

As for students looking for information, they'll now be directed to the Office of Student Affairs and Services. The decision to dissolve the center creates a void for female students, former employee Maggie Chesbrough said.

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“Don't get me wrong, the WRC definitely needed to be updated and better funded so that it could compare to the rest of the women's resource centers that various Big 10 universities have,” Chesbrough, a senior majoring in English, said. “But this integration of WorkLife and the WRC isn't much of an integration.”

MSU used staff from the Women's Resource Center as well as its Family Resouce Center to create the WorkLife Office, said MSU spokesman Jason Cody. One employee will be coordinating resources for student parents within the Office of Student Affairs and Services, but there won't be anyone doing the same for female students generally.

“WRC and (Family Resource Center) constituents were primarily employees,” Cody said. “The new WorkLife Office will focus on being a one-stop shop for employee resources.”

MSU is now one of two Big 10 universities without a resource center specifically for women on their main campus. Indiana University is the other.

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The fact that there have been increases in the number of female college students or that there are more women in science, technology, engineering and math fields doesn’t eliminate the need for women’s resource centers at universities, Jayne Schuiteman, an associate professor for the Center for Gender in Global Context at MSU and a senior institutional equity investigator, argued in a letter posted on the Women’s Resource Center’s website.

"Due to the systemic forms of oppression faced by women, from young undergrads to seasoned professionals and faculty members, systems and initiatives must be implemented to assist the development of women as respected contributing members of the campus community," she wrote. "A Women’s Resource Center committed to the development of women as full participants in the life of the campus community remains vital to the university."

Schuiteman declined to comment for this story.

MSU could have attracted more students to the center had it dedicated more resources to supporting it, said Megdi Abebe, who worked at the center for two years before its closure.

“It’s easy to say the center did not service students well enough to justify closing it down, but if you do not give the Center any resources to become more accessible to students, then the problem is not exclusively at fault of the WRC,” she wrote in an email. Center staff helped visitors work other offices on campus, such as the counseling center or MSU Safe Place.

With two full-time employees and the occasional temporary worker, the center didn’t have enough staff to reach more students, Abebe said.

Scholarship dollars awarded by the Women’s Resource Center will now be given out by student affairs, said Denise Maybank, vice president of student affairs. More money will also be given out via these scholarships than in the previous academic year, from $83,254 to $119,687 this upcoming school year . A graduate student will also be coordinating MSU's Women’s Initiative for Leadership Development, or WILD, from the student affairs office.

Debate raged back and forth on social media earlier this month after the Lansing State Journal reported that MSU's women’s only study lounge, a refuge for female students since the 1920s, will reopen this fall as a space for all genders. The change prompted student Alyssa Maternto start an online petition demanding a reversal.

“When I heard about the closures I was shocked that the university that I love so much was taking away the resources so many woman used regularly,” she wrote in an email, referring to the changes to the lounge and the resource center.

Nearly 4,900 people have signed Matern’s online petition to restore the study lounge as a women’s only space as well as to reinstate the women’s resource center.

Space formerly occupied by the center will be used by employees of MSU's neighborhood engagement centers as well as for the Multi-Racial Unity Living Experience program, Cody said.

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Contact RJ Wolcott at (517) 377-1026 or rwolcott@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @wolcottr.