As a Women Peer Counselor, last year was a struggle. The program needed to assert itself. We needed to find, develop or craft a WPC identity. Somewhere in this honorable mission to revitalize the WPC program, shoring up our collective worth was supposed to come through broadcasting ourselves in an unattainable role: We were to be specialists on a sprawling network of deep issues, from sexism to eating concerns to sexual assault.
This year, we look to honor this story of last year's collective WPC experience, appreciating all the work that went into defining and addressing the different challenges the program faces. This year, we look to take the morals of this story, hold them tight and use the momentum and productive connections its actors and writers worked so hard to forge. We get our own story going this way, in terms that allow us to be the best WPCs — the best supporters, liaisons, community builders, peers and counselors — that we can be here and now.
We do not claim to be specialists — however that is calibrated — in the issues of gender, sexuality, sexism, safer sex, eating concerns, relationships, assertiveness and sexual harassment and assault. This is not in the mission statement as cited in the report last year's two WPC representatives sent to the Office of Residential Life.
The goal of the WPC program is to incorporate into its mission special, critical attention to and engagement of sexism, gender issues and the different manifestations of these issues. They are big issues, and we cannot do it all ourselves. We could do lots of things differently, and we are doing lots of things differently than we did last year. We could train for years, move away from the ResLife and work toward making a core corps of women with a stunning depth and breadth of knowledge and training on these issues.
We could theoretically throw ourselves into such a project, but even the greatest messages lose their power if no one hears them. Here our strength as peer counselors lies in our connections to the residential communities we help build. We use our place in the residence halls to nurture important conversations. We flow toward developing dynamic, supportive residential units. We humanize the University's resources, tailor support networks and endeavor to be the best WPCs we can be. We are women, yes, but we are here to work with everybody.
So yes, we need to be to be informed and aware, but we also need to be student-people. If you have friends who are both specialists in the eight issues above and healthily engaged undergraduate students, please let us know. We would love to learn with them.
To reflect the continuity of the WPC program — trials and successes included — it seems fitting to close with a note from the report that last year's two WPC representatives presented to ResLife: "We ask our readers to remember one of the Ws' favorite ground rules: ‘Trust intent.'"
Trusting the intent of ResLife allows us to develop relationships and invest our energy efficiently as we navigate the challenges of developing as WPCs and individuals. Each of us works to be a great WPC, generally knowledgeable and specifically attuned to the issues we address. Each of us also works to be a full student-person, generally involved and specifically in tune with the communities we are so integrally a part of. Both individually and organizationally we wrestle all kinds of challenges. We could bicker internally, whine publicly and hold our breaths until things change. Or we could critically work from within our parent organization as we endeavor to grow up and assert our identity as a group of Residential Peer Leaders especially engaged in issues of gender, sexuality, sexism, safer sex, eating concerns, relationships, assertiveness and sexual harassment and assault.
Lucy Stephenson '13 is a current WPC student leader and a WPC in Little-wut? Littlefield. She can be reached at lucy_stephenson@brown.edu.
