Tonight's Show: The UofC Women's Centre undergoes unwelcome changes

Over the past few months, changes have been brewing at the University of Calgary's Women's Resource Centre (WRC). The space that the WRC occupies has been changed to include a new Centre for Community-Engaged Learning, which is supposed to enhance civic consciousness and educate students about the value of community service.

Student volunteers with the Women's Resource Centre are upset about these changes. According to their petition to save the WRC, their number of volunteers has been severely reduced and capped at 50, some of their programs have been cut (including the very successful Women-Mentoring-Women program), their annual WRC Awards have been postponed indefinitely, and gender-reserved times have been eliminated.

Tonight we are speaking with two women who are involved with the WRC and have been fighting to return the space back to it's original intent. This is quite a personal issue for me as well, because when I was a student at the University of Calgary I was part of a group of women that fought hard to get the Women's Centre on campus in the first place. Prior to the WRC opening in 2006, the University of Calgary was the only significant university in Canada that did not have a women's centre. I know first-hand how hard the struggle was to get the Women's Centre on campus, and now to see it's space and it's programs being dwindled down to practically nothing is very upsetting.

For more information on this:

• Save the WRC facebook page
• Women's Centre Changes Concern Students - The Gauntlet, September 9, 2010
  

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