Women's Resource Center? Define "Resource"

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single woman in possession of good fortune, must align herself with identity politics. And like Austen’s famously single-minded heroines, she must concern herself with no actual politics and instead shade her character lines with solipsism and self-aggrandizement.

Such explains the current predicament of the Women’s Resource Center. The students there (with one or two brave exceptions) rejected a speaker for the next Take Back the Night rally. Their reason—said speaker, an employee of Planned Parenthood (who never asked for any remuneration, including gas money for driving thirty-five miles round-trip) planned to speak about reproductive rights in light of Bush’s reelection. While this may seem like a timely topic, especially for the promiscuous and careless students at SLU (Kinsey's definition of a nymphomaniac: "Someone who has more sex than you do"), it was rejected by the burgeoning Emmas of the WRC.

This is no surprise. The ostensible feminists of St. Lawrence University rarely rise for causes of import. See WRC advisor Judith DeGroat's 2003 bold letter to The Hill News [Free registration required]. The issue in question was an Outing Club t-shirt slogan-- "Penetrating Mother Nature for 25 Years." The humor of the apparel, bearing only a single entendre, is pitiable.

DeGroat's response is equally uninteresting. "As far as (sic) the Oedipal implications contained in the declaration 'Penetrating Mother Nature for 25 Years,' I think it is preferable to leave that to each individual t-shirt designer and his/her therapist of choice. Cheerfully, Judith DeGroat."

One can almost see the "cheer" of DeGroat as she confuses "far" and "for." However, her smugness in referencing Freud's Oedipal theory baffles us. Surely she (as a Professor of Gender Studies) is aware that the grossly unethical Freud silenced the charges of Viennese girls who were sexually abused by their bourgeois fathers (who rewarded Freud handsomely) with his theories of Oedipus and Electra.

Thus it comes as no surprise that the residents of the Women's Resource Center (again, with one or two brave exceptions) would believe that theirs is a cause apolitical. Their advisor has a flimsy purchase of English grammar and is prone to spouting the ideas of an incest-assisting and stogie-fond quack in an attempt to appear witty. By example, she has taught her advisees to assume none but the most perfunctory and unimportant of causes.

To all readers who are interested in women's rights, we direct you here. For once, perhaps, the women of the WRC could be bothered to burden themselves with the cause of women's rights.