What Happened to SMC's Women's Center and College?

About a year or so ago, Santa Monica College offered a Women's Center. The webpage stated the following:

The Santa Monica College Women's Center provides:
Assistance and orientation for mature female students to smooth their transition back into college;
Counseling and support for single and teen parents, homemakers, and a gender equity program to encourage and support students pursuing non-traditional careers for their gender;
Assistance in locating on- and off-campus resources such as child care and financial aid for women returning to school;
Peer tutoring, study skills, workshops, conferences, and special events; and
Small support groups that deal with issues such as assertiveness training.
The Women's Center also holds weekly seminars and workshops related to women's issues, as well as an annual celebration of Women's History Month. These are open to all students and are often open to guests of students. Announcements are posted around the campus and in the Corsair.

Here's a screenshot:



Now, the Women's Center page from SMC has vanished. Click on the link to see for yourself or merely look at the screenshot I made below:



The Women's College course offerings for Fall 2006 also suffered a similar fate. Now we see it, now we don't. The webpage read as follows:

The Women’s College facilitates and promotes the success of women through curriculum, academic events, and leadership opportunities. The program offers an interdisciplinary and multidisciplinary course of study that focuses on women’s experiences across race, ethnic, gender and socio-economic lines. The coursework examines the role of gender as a social construction, as a dynamic in power relationships, and as a factor in social, historical and cultural participation.

For further information, contact: Brenda Antrim, Women’s College Faculty Leader (ext. 3538)

Here's a partial screenshot confirming that the page was online:



Here's the list of full courses for Fall 2006 offered through the Women's College:

FALL 2006 WOMEN’S COLLEGE COURSES

ANATMY 1, General Human Anatomy 4 units UC, CSU
1047 7:30a-10:35a MW SCI 224 Dell M M
Arrange-1 Hour SCI 245

BIOL 2, Human Biology 3 units UC, CSU
4051 6:45p-9:50p T SCI 151 Cramer A E

ECON 1, Principles of Microeconomics 3 units UC, CSU
1664 9:30a-10:50a MW MC 16 Garcia C P

ECON 5, Political Economy 3 units UC, CSU
1697 12:45p-3:50p Th LV 160 Rabach E R

ENGL 2, Critical Analysis and Interm. Composition 3 units UC, CSU
1822 9:30a-10:50a TTh DRSCHR 211 Goldthwait B F

FILM STUDIES 6, Women in Film 3 units UC, CSU
4273 6:00p-10:05p F LS 152 Hunt S E

HIST 10, Ethnicity and American Culture 3 units UC, CSU
2244 9:30a-10:50a MW HSS 106 Kawaguchi L A

HIST 52, Women in American Culture 3 units UC, CSU
2298 9:30a-10:50a TTh HSS 106 Manoff R J

PHILOS 52, Modern Political Thought 3 units UC, CSU
2806 2:15p-3:35p MW LA 240 Katherine A L

POL SC 5, Political Economy 3 units UC, CSU
2897 12:45p-3:50p Th LV 160 Rabach E R

POL SC 23, The Politics of Gender 3 units UC, CSU
2904 9:30a-10:50a MW MC 3 Oifer E R

POL SC 52, Modern Political Thought 3 units UC, CSU
2907 2:15p-3:35p MW LA 240 Katherine A L

SOCIOL 1, Introduction to Sociology 3 units UC, CSU
2999 12:45p-2:05p MW LA 115 Preciado C

SOCIOL 33, Sociology of Sex and Gender 3 units C, CSU
3014 11:15a-12:35p MW MC 9 Livings G S

SPEECH 5, Interpersonal Communication 3 units CSU
3079 8:00a-11:05a F LS 105 Grass Hemmert N L

WOM ST 10, Introduction to Women’s Studies 3 units UC, CSU
3127 12:45p-2:05p TTh MC 4 Manoff R J

The Women's College main webpage has vanished as well. The main page is gone, too, despite the fact it was there about a year or so ago. Here's another screenshot I made of the webpage that was online:




With all the hype SMC places on student success, it is a shame that the Women's College is gone. Additionally, according to SMC's statistics, women comprise the majority of students enrolled at SMC since 2001! You can view SMC's overall enrollment data from Winter 2001 to Spring 2006 HERE. Here's a nice Adobe PDF I made of SMC enrollment data to keep handy.

As you can see, female students really outnumber male students at SMC. To take away the Women's Center and Women's College is a real step backwards for women's rights. Not only does this have the potential of cutting enrollment to the college, it could potentially hurt donations from non-profit women's foundations and wealthy women individual donors.

Another embarrassing fact that SMC would not like you to realize is that SMC's enrollment has failed to recover. Over the last five years, from Spring 2001 to Spring 2006, it has actually decreased despite the growing number of Californians attending college. In Spring 2001, total SMC enrollment was 82,857 students. Fast-forward to Spring 2006, and you'll see that the total SMC enrollment plummeted to 76,417 students, down by 6,440 students. If those students were full time students, taking a minimum of 12 units at $26.00 a unit, that translates into a student tuition fee loss of $2,009,280. That's over two million dollars! SMC needs to seriously reconsider how it recruits and retains its students and to give us the respect we deserve.

-- Des Manttari,
Editor-in-Chief,
Phoenix Genesis

(c) 2006: Phoenix Genesis/MBS LP


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