The Women’s Resource Center announced that it is changing its name to “The Center for Gender, Sexuality, and Activism at Boston University” at a third birthday celebration in its office in the basement of the George Sherman Union Friday.
The CGSA directors said they decided the birthday party, which 65 students attended, would be a good opportunity to announce the name change.
“By changing our name we make it accessible,” said WRC co-director Ariana Katz, a senior in the College of Arts and Sciences. “We talked a lot in gender theory about how women and men are a binary category and by talking about gender as a whole, we’re sort of like smashing that dichotomy and that’s really important to me.”
Mentorship coordinator Beth Brodsky, a College of Communication sophomore, said that the new name better reflects the CGSA mission.
“We want to make change,” she said. “We want to make everyone feel welcome.”
The center was ready for a name that “reflects inclusivity in space and student activism,” said co-director Diane Adamson, a CAS sophomore.
CGSA members tried for more than 30 years before getting a permanent location on campus, according to a presentation members showed at the celebration. The Dean of Students offered the members a space in the GSU basement in 2008.
CGSA leaders said they hope to use the birthday party as a way of recruiting new members.
“A party is a pretty easy way of entering [the community],” Katz said. “It brings us all together and gives us a chance to celebrate.”
Katz said that she hopes CGSA will remain a “safe space for people to crash when they’re running around the GSU.”
CAS junior Kerry Aszklar said she enjoys spending time in the center.
“It’s a comfortable place, and it’s such a safe place to come to,” Aszklar said.
Metropolitan College senior A.J. Bakos said he had minimal knowledge of the center before attending the party, but that he was able to understand more about it through their presentation.
“The change is going to include a lot more people, broaden the organization and it’s going to help a lot more people,” Bakos said.
Students who attended the party said they would most likely return to CGSA in the future after seeing all of the ways in which its members are involved in the community.
CAS junior Ileana Tauscher, a member of an activist collective group that meets in the center on Fridays, said she was excited to find out about the new name.
“I will definitely do more things here, especially if they’re moving their focus toward a wider scope,” Tauscher said.
Brodsky said the center’s birthday party is an acknowledgement of the work they do year-round.
“We’re still here, we’re still active and we’re still making a change,” Brodsky said.
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