Amy Richards '88 with Tinker Saltonstall, former faculty
On Thursday last week, Amy Richards '88 came to campus to speak to our community. Amy is a published author, blogger, speaker, and women's rights activist, and has most recently been involved in promoting a documentary film she has helped to get off the ground called Makers.
Makers is a compilation of stories of individual women and their role in advancing women's rights or the positive image of women in America. (The idea was to create a film about the women who helped "make" America.) The women tell their stories through interviews, each having taken a stand to highlight an injustice, or maybe as the first woman to do some activity, job, etc. As an example, Sandra Day O'Connor as the first woman Supreme Court Justice is a "maker," as are Katie Couric and Oprah Winfrey. The interviews are being brought to campuses across the country, which is part of Amy's role in the project, and were aired in full in a three hour movie on PBS last February. See www.makers.com for more information or to watch some of the many interviews. It is an impressive and massive undertaking!
In her talk, Amy shared an interview (click here) with us of the first woman to run the Boston Marathon, Katherine Switzer, and some footage of a race official who tried to forcefully removed her from the race. The woman said she just wanted to run, and was supported by her boyfriend who blocked the official so she could run on and ultimately finish the race. For our students, who take women in sports for granted, it was a bit of an eye opener to learn that women have not always had those opportunities: even at Tabor. It also showed an example of how men have helped to advance women over the years, foreshadowing a final point about how we can all take action.
Amy spoke a bit about what it was like at Tabor as one of the early classes with boarding girls when the school moved back to co-education after a twenty year hiatus. It was during this time that she found her voice as a leader, helping administrators to see certain inequalities (like in sports equipment, uniforms and facilities) as well as biases teachers might have had about academic skills girls either had or did not have. She also shared much of what she loved about Tabor: her friends, teachers and role models, and the challenging academic environment.
Amy told us that the women's movement today is really about fairness, and fairness for all people not just women. She encouraged both the girls and the boys in our community to stand up for fairness in humanity as simply the right thing to do. She asked us specifically to think about how we speak to each other, how we talk about others, what we do with social media etc, to determine if the way we are acting is detrimental to others. She argued that girls and boys can make a difference, for instance, in the high rates of sexual assault across college campuses cited in the news these days, by calling out these behaviors, stepping in to stop a negative situation from developing, or altering and labeling some of the language we use that might lead to devaluing people as being unacceptable. She pointed out that sexual assault, like many issues feminists care about, is not soley a woman's issue as it affects us all, women and men, as well as our families and society.
Amy challenged us to think and act differently in the name of fairness. Indeed, we can all make a difference through our positive words and actions in support of each other.
Thanks for coming, Amy, and sharing your insights with us.
