This past Monday, Barnard College hosted U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.) and other accomplished women for a press conference on problems facing working women in today’s job market. Unfortunately, few students knew about the event. While the college should be praised for welcoming such notable speakers to campus, all students should have been notified about the conference in advance.
Intended primarily for the media, the conference was organized to discuss pay equity and bring attention to the struggles working women face. Clinton spoke about the importance of women’s colleges and their ability to educate students about the obstacles they may face in the working world. The handful of students who did attend the conference in person got to ask the senator direct questions. Senator Clinton has long said that it is important to introduce young women to pay-equity issues, which are often written off as a relic of the women’s rights movement. If this event is any indication, then Barnard has failed in this task. Despite the event’s relevance to current students, few were encouraged to witness it. The college held a simulcast of the event in the James Room, but only e-mailed students enrolled in select majors or classes with this information.
Barnard was wrong to keep the majority of its students in the dark about the event. While planning for the conference took place just that Friday, offering little time to release the news, Spectator announced Clinton’s impending arrival Saturday—a full 24 hours ahead of the official notice. Immediate e-mails should have been sent to students throughout the University inviting them to attend the conference or its simulcast. If the James Room’s maximum capacity of 200 students deterred organizers from inviting more students, they should have moved the projection to a larger venue or broadcast it online. When Barnard features big-name speakers like Senator Clinton and put a spotlight on issues like pay equity, it should ensure that its students can take advantage of such events.
During her speech, Senator Clinton mentioned that many young women will enter the working world making 80 percent less than their male coworkers, but this shocking statistic did not reach the majority of University students. Hosting an event pertinent to students and setting up a simulcast in the James Room were steps in the right direction, but Barnard was wrong to keep such a noteworthy happening quiet. Though it cannot change the past, the college should not ignore its students in the future.
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