Sitting on a bench in Woods Quad is where I feel most comfortable on campus. It is where the Department of Gender and Race Studies is housed. My cohort, a group of brilliant graduate students, the faculty that challenge and support me and the students who engage in a particularly difficult type of scholarship are all found there. This is where I have found community, the place I have cried, laughed and learned more than I thought possible. It is on these benches that people have shared stories of surviving violence, their deepest wounds opened in hopes to work towards healing.
It was in this haven that I sat as another woman shared with me her experience with sexual violence. She recounted the story, I could feel her relief that someone believed her and that she finally spoke her experience into the world, on her terms. I shared my own experience of sexual violence. It is common to so many women. Devastatingly, the threat of this violence is often a unifier for women, something that allows us to move past racial difference, a shared trauma. Most women know this silent fear and understand the stranglehold it has on our existence.
As we are both sharing our experiences, our eyes welling with tears as we recount our pain, a group of people come by on a campus tour. The white woman leading them is in a beautiful red tailored suit, a sensible heel and the perfect shade of lipstick. Their tour is scripted, with little variation. As they pass through the courtyard, she is telling them how these were the first dorms on campus. “The men barricaded themselves in. They threw rocks! They wanted something from the University, can anyone guess what it is?” No one attempts the guess. She has paused the group for dramatic effect, our legs are almost touching the high school seniors. “Come on, what do men want??” Still no guesses. “GIRLS AND FOOTBALL!” Laughter. I knew the joke was coming. I hear it so often. I had braced myself for it. The woman I am sitting next to is startled. She was not prepared. I look at her, her eyes widen, she sits straighter. Tears stream down her cheeks. Once again, she is reminded why she was brought here. Of course men wanted women. The man who raped her wanted women.
On this tour, I also hear the joke about women’s studies being housed in Manly hall, its irony is obviously hilarious. I wonder if the students know that Basil Manly was named for a man who would publicly whip student’s slaves. Is that why its funny? Or that he would rent black women out to students because, of course, the men wanted women? That must be why it is funny and why we are continually reminded of it.
The greatest irony in all of this is that it is a false history. The University of Alabama cites on its website that women enrolling at the University in 1893 was “due in large part to the successful lobbying of the UA Board of Trustees by Julia S. Tutwiler.” No mention is made on this page of history about men demanding for “girls” to be accepted on campus. In fact, I could find no mention of men pressuring the administration to allow football until it was temporarily banned in 1898, after women were enrolled at the University.
I will move away from campus this year, and it feels like such an incredible loss. Students here are showing incredible bravery, struggling to be better, and loving each other deeply. It is because of these students, and those that come after us, that when I look up from that bench, I realize we must do better.
Lindsey Smith is a graduate student in the department of political science.
