Correction appended.
Reed McNab '12 said she realized the Women Peer Counselor program was not what she expected on "day one of training."
McNab, who worked as a WPC Representative last year and a WPC the previous year, spent a majority of last year fighting for improvements within the WPC program with Natalie Serrino '12, the other WPC Rep. But their efforts garnered few results.
McNab was disappointed when she realized the Office of Residential Life "did not seem to value the W program and the ideals of the W program in the way I hoped it would," she said.
The WPC program was founded in 1983 in a joint effort by members of the student group Brown Against Rape and Sexism and the Office of Student Life, according to the WPC job description.
"WPCs will provide relaxed, in-home counseling and information and … create a climate that recognizes sexism and promotes personal exploration of issues most important to women," founding members said in an April 21, 1983, Herald article. McNab said she felt the program has strayed from the ideals of its original purpose, and WPCs are instead treated as an extra group of Resident Counselors.
"If I wanted to be an RC, I would have applied to be an RC," she said.
Lack of training
One of the biggest issues with the program is the lack of extensive specialized training for the WPCs before the school year begins, McNab said.
Zoe Stephenson '12, a former WPC and current Community Assistant, said she received no specialized WPC training during her Residential Peer Leader training two years ago. According to the job description, "WPCs counsel women and men at Brown on issues such as sexism, gender issues, contraception and safer sex, eating concerns, sexuality, relationships, assertiveness, sexual harassment and assault."
ResLife added one day to the training schedule specifically for WPC training after McNab and Serrino persistently negotiated with the office, McNab said.
This year, the WPCs received two days of specialized training prior to their RPL training, wrote Natalie Basil, associate director of ResLife, in an email to The Herald.
But this is still not enough, McNab said.
"That's a huge problem because there are about eight issues in our mission statement that we say we're specialists in," she said. "When we go into residence halls, we claim that we're specialists in these issues when we're not, and that's very dangerous. That's very detrimental to freshmen."
Sarah Forman '13, one of the two current WPC Reps and a Herald staff writer, said though there were only two days of specific training this summer, there were still plenty of opportunities for WPCs to meet and talk about these issues during RPL training.
"It's hard because I think I can pretty easily come up with a summer's worth of training," Forman said. "I don't think that training can ever be completely inclusive. But I also don't think that's what it's supposed to do. It's supposed to give you the tools and the confidence and the background that you can figure out an answer later."
‘Give and take'
Most of the conversations WPCs had with ResLife last year were unsuccessful because administrators did not understand the students' perspective, McNab said.
In October 2010, McNab and Serrino put together a report that included results from a poll administered to WPCs from two separate years and recommendations on how to improve the program as a whole, McNab said. They met with Basil and various Community Directors, but the meeting resulted in no significant changes to the program, she said.
Based on this and other interactions, the WPCs formed a steering committee led by Haley Kossek '13 and Anna Quinn '13 to come up with recommendations for ResLife to implement and to strengthen the program's mission, McNab said.
Kossek and Quinn had a lot of conversations with Basil and other ResLife administrators, but no changes were implemented last year, McNab said. McNab resigned from her position as a WPC Rep in April 2011.
Though Basil received McNab and Serrino's report, she never received anything final from the chairs of the steering committee regarding recommendations or thoughts about the WPC program, she wrote.
This year, conversations between the WPC Reps and ResLife have been less contentious, Forman said, adding that she gets asked for feedback from ResLife all the time. After fall training, she and the other WPCs filled out surveys asking how to improve the training, she said.
Forman and Lucy Stephenson '13 also had many conversations with Basil over the summer and were able to agree on a majority of issues regarding fall training, Forman said.
"I think it's a pretty healthy relationship," she said. "There's a lot of give and take. We're asked to take on a lot of responsibility, but in exchange, we get a very powerful voice in what gets done."
Creating community
Despite last year's tensions between WPCs and ResLife, Molly Lao '13, a former WPC and member of the steering committee, enjoyed the community aspect of working with very knowledgeable peers.
"It was great to know that they cared about issues revolving around body image and sexuality and so on," Lao said.
Forman, who also sat on the steering committee, said she has seen a lot of improvements within the program. "The program has stayed as strong as it was" at its founding, Forman said. "It hasn't sharply detoured off of what it used to be."
Improvements with the training this year included two different reading packets for the WPCs, one compiled by ResLife and one compiled by Forman and Lucy Stephenson, Forman said. There was also more W-specific training within ResLife along with conversations with Gail Cohee, director of the Sarah Doyle Women's Center, and Kelly Garrett, coordinator of the LGBTQ Resource Center.
Basil said she has seen an increased interest in all the RPL programs, including the WPC program. The returner rate for all RPL programs — RCs, CAs and WPCs — is 60 percent, she said.
"Part of it is just a general happiness with the program, feeling good about the supervision they're getting from their community directors and feeling good about the work they're doing in the units and in the residence halls," Basil said.
But only seven of the 22 WPCs in 2010 returned to the program this year, Basil said.
The large number of returners throughout all three programs is a "very good indicator of their satisfaction moving forward," said Richard Bova, senior associate dean of residential and dining services.
‘Cannot stay the same'
The recommendations for what can be done to fix the program vary.
For Lao, the ambiguity of the WPC's role is in most need of change.
"We can just make it more explicit what the WPC program does," Lao said. "I think as soon as we're able to more firmly establish that among everyone in general, we can find a more coherent way to deal with issues."
Octavia Wallace '12, a CA and former WPC, said the WPC program should adopt a programmatic model similar to that of the Minority Peer Counselor program, which is based out of the Third World Center.
The lack of continuity among administrators in the ResLife office has greatly handicapped the WPC program, Zoe Stephenson said. Because the Community Directors tend to be involved in ResLife for a couple of years before moving on, there has never been a single person that has fully understood and advocated for what the WPC program stands for, she said.
"It's not that they're bad people — it's just a bad setup," she said.
Stephenson said she hopes the program can move away from ResLife and become more closely associated with programs like the Sarah Doyle Women's Center.<
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"I think that training and vision of the WPC should go to someone whose agenda, whose paycheck and whose happiness is aligned with making the WPC a good program," she said.
"It really cannot stay the same the way it is," McNab said. "Honestly, the way it is, it should not exist."
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that Octavia Wallace '12 is a Women Peer Counselor. She is a Community Assistant and a former WPC. The article also stated that Wallace said she wanted the WPC program to merge with the Minority Peer Counselor program. Wallace said she thought the WPC program should adopt a similar programmatic model to the one used by the MPCs. The Herald regrets the errors.
