Letter to the Editor — Jesse Allen

Letter+to+the+Editor+--+Jesse+Allen

While I am happy to see that you recognized the faculty and political representation at Thursday’s protest, I am left wondering why the women who organized, implemented, and staged it were not quoted, mentioned, or even named. So I’ll do it for you: With the help of Dr. Keri Wilkes, associate professor of Spanish and associate dean of the graduate school, and Tracia Banuelos, an undergraduate senior of human resource management and psychology and minor in women’s studies, and community psychology doctoral student Debbie Ojeda-Leitner, staged a successful protest against the proposed US tax bill.

Planning a protest is a monumental workload that goes unpaid and more often than not ends up costing the organizer money from their own pocket. It involves logistics, phone calls, speech writing, and other unforeseen hiccups. It involves the emotional labor of making sure that the 40+ people in attendance are safe. Thursday’s protest was the product of hard work, determination, and commitment. As a fellow grad student fearful of this proposed tax bill, I thank everyone who spoke, but especially the women who pulled this together.

Representation is important. Too often women, especially women of color and queer women’s work, goes unrecognized. Obviously, this is one of the factors leading to the wage gap, but erasure also has a deeply profound and harmful psychological effect. We all need to work at fixing this problem.

Please do better at reporting; while this might be just a careless oversight, it speaks highly about how this university and newspaper views the status of women, especially marginalized women.

Jesse Allen