Last Sunday's incident with the "Womyn are Everywhere" stickers disturbed me greatly for two reasons: my motorcycle had a sticker plastered to it the next morning and I am a woman who strongly supports women's rights and equality.
I do happen to own a motorcycle and do not believe that vandalism will accomplish anything. Did the woman who did this think to herself that maybe another woman owned the bike? Or did she say, oh, motorcycle, let's send this guy a message?
To the people responsible for these stickers, I think I know what you want to say and I probably would back your goals 100 percent. Without the women's equality laws for which you fight, I wouldn't have the great opportunity to play ice hockey at Dartmouth on the varsity level. Without the laws against sexual harassment for which you fight and the sentiment of social equality that you try to foster, I would not be able to ride a motorcycle around this campus without being looked down upon or harassed.
I appreciate greatly women's equality and the fact that we have the opportunity to accomplish our goals and follow our dreams; whether they are or are not traditionally feminine things to do, we must consider what is the best way to obtain that equality.
Have the people who have fought for women's rights in the past , and who really accomplished something, disregarded laws and damaged random people's property? No, the people who change things are respected and dignified -- writers, athletes, musicians and even those whose names are not famous, but who are still hard-working and honest. It's then that people's attitudes are changed. Destructive people only seem to anger others and hurt the cause for which they fight.
During one of our last hockey games last season, we had close to a thousand fans -- men and women -- cheering us on to an Ivy League Championship. People came out there to watch us play and, in a way, by coming, these people showed us respect. To me, that changed more attitudes about women than anonymously putting stickers all over the place.
If you put the time it took to put up the stickers into something useful, maybe you would help to gain respect for women in general and make the changes that you so badly want to make. The stickers did accomplish something -- they made alot of people angry. The result was contradictory to the efforts by most women on this campus to gain respect and it was these women who were most offended by the act.
