Feminist Events Calendar

March: Women's History Month
-1: International Women of Color Day
-8: International Women's Day
-10: National Day of Appreciation for Abortion Providers
-21/22: Back Up Your Birth Control Day

April: Sexual Assault Awareness Month
-13: National Crisis Pregnancy Centers Protest Day
-22: Earth Day

May: Women's Health Care Month
-4th: National Teen Pregnancy Prevention Day
-8th-14th: National Women's Health Week   

Contact Us!

Call us toll free at either the East coast office (1-866-444-FMLA) or the West coast office (1-866-471-FMLA). You can also email us at campusteam@feminist.org. We are always happy to hear from you and answer any questions or concerns!

What do you think?

This is your E-zine, and we are always updating and changing to fit your needs, so please let us know what you think of our new format! Email campusteam@feminist.org with any suggestions, ideas, or comments.

Walk for Women's Lives
We are excited to announce our spring campus campaign, Walk for Women's Lives to fight ovarian and uterine cancer.

We are helping campus groups from around the country to organize local Walk for Women's Lives events. Local walks offer three great benefits:

• Walks will help fund clinical trials for women with uterine and ovarian cancer
• Walks will support women's health education and advocacy programs on campus
• Walks offer you and other walkers the chance to educate your campus and community about ovarian and uterine cancers.

Participants can be of any age and should be recruited from both campus and community organizations.

We need you to help Walk for Women's Lives!

CHANGE YOUR CAMPUS. CHANGE YOUR WORLD.
Lifetime Television's Our Lifetime Commitment: 2006 College Corps invites you to join us in celebration of National Women's History Month and watch the premiere of the 2004 HBO original movie, Iron Jawed Angels starring Academy Award-winner Hilary Swank, Frances O'Connor, Julia Ormond, and Angelica Huston on Sunday, March 5th at 10 AM on Lifetime Television.

Host a viewing party for your friends and classmates and don't miss the true story of women activists – Alice Paul, Lucy Burns, and Carrie Chapman Catt – fighting for a woman's right to vote in the 1920's. Together they lead the suffrage movement and risk it all – their lives, freedom, and love. They are given the nickname “Iron Jawed Angels” for their participation in hunger strikes while in jail.

Celebrate Women's History Month on YOUR Campus!

• Hold a voting rally in a student center: Students can register to vote and receive information on upcoming elections. Students can become “Silent Sentinels,” like the suffragist in the movie, holding signs with information on voting statistics pertaining to women ages 18-24.
• Voting Statistics according to the U.S. Census Bureau:
• A little over 7.6 million women between the ages of 18-24 were registered for the November 2004 election. They represent 54.9 percent of women in that age group.

• Host an Iron Jawed Angels themed brunch in the student center or residence halls: Students can watch Iron Jawed Angels while having brunch. Afterwards they can discuss the movie, voting rights, and other issues that matter to women on campus.

• Coming Soon: A Viewer's Guide! For other ideas on ways to celebrate Women's History Month on your campus: Visit Lifetimetv.com Our Lifetime Commitment: College Corps 2006. Coming soon a Viewer's Guide complete with Alice Paul's biography, facts about the movie and voting in the United States, discussion prompts, and more!

Back Up Your Birth Control Day 2006 (March 21/22)
Emergency Contraception: Get It Before You Need It!
Emergency Contraception (EC) is extremely effective in preventing a pregnancy if taken within 120 hours of unprotected sexual intercourse. However, most women still don't know about EC or how they can get it. With Spring Break approaching on your campus, now is an important time to make sure that students are educated about and have access to condoms and EC prior to leaving campus!

Join the national Back Up Your Birth Control Day Campaign and educate your campus on March 21 and 22 about access to EC! Post flyers, host tabling events and speak outs about EC and how to access it on your campus and in your community. In addition to awareness about community politics and EC, remember to educate about the FDA holding EC's over-the-counter status hostage! Read the enclosed information sheets for more detail about the FDA and EC.

To find out more about Back Up Your Birth Control Day, EC and what activism you can do on your campus, visit www.overthecounterec.org. In addition, please send emails and pictures to campusteam@feminist.org from any activities, large or small, that promote awareness of emergency contraception on campus so we can share your work with our national network of feminist campus activists.

Widener University (PA)
Widener FMLA in Chester, PA had success in January with their living wage campaign. The Widener FMLA has been lobbying their University President and administration for the past two years in an effort to increase benefits and wages for Aramark employees at their campus. In a win, the President of Widener University released a statement on January 30th stating that negotiations with Aramark left them offering all Aramark employees no less than $8.50/hour for all Aramark employees. In addition, the amount will increase within a year to a minimum of $9.00/hour. This amount rivals the Philadelphia Living Wage which is currently set at $7.76/hour. Keep up the awesome activism Widener FMLA!

New FMLAs!
We would like to welcome the Mira Costa College (CA) FMLA and new affiliate groups FOCUS at Wichita State University (KS), and the Women And Gender Studies Student Association at Eastern Michigan University to the Feminist Majority Leadership Alliance community!

Supreme Court Will Hear Late-Term Abortion Case
February 21, 2006--Today, the Supreme Court announced that it will consider the Justice Department's appeal of a ruling that a federal ban on late-term abortions was unconstitutional. The case involves the Partial-Birth Abortion Act, passed by Congress in 2003, but never enforced. Circuit courts around the country considered challenges to the law and ruled it to be unconstitutional because of its lack of an exception for cases in which a woman's health is in danger. The 9th Circuit Court furthermore found the language of the statute too vague to be enforced. More

Access to Emergency Contraception Moves Ahead in Two States
February 21, 2006--Emergency contraception may soon be available without a prescription in pharmacies in Colorado and New York. A committee in the Colorado House has voted in favor of a bill giving pharmacists the authority to dispense emergency contraception, and New York Attorney General and gubernatorial candidate Eliot Spitzer (D) announced his support for pharmacy access in New York. More

OCR Urges Use of Title IX to Protect Students from Sexual Harassment
February 16, 2006--School boards and educators across the nation have been notified by Stephanie Monroe, the new Assistant Secretary for the Office for Civil Rights in the US Department of Education, that protecting students from sexual harassment using Title IX sexual harassment guidance must become a top priority. In her "Dear Colleague" letter, Monroe said that "a significant number of students are still subjected to sexual harassment, which can interfere with a student's education as well as his or her emotional well being." She also said that the Office for Civil Rights plans to conduct a series of Title IX compliance reviews. A recent AAUW study found that nearly two-thirds of college students in the U.S. have experienced sexual harassment. More

More Feminist News

Australian Parliament Moves to Make RU-486 Available
February 17, 2006--An effective ban on RU-486 in Australia ended this week when the Australian House of Representatives passed a bill to remove Health Minister Tony Abbot's veto over the drug. The vote concurs with an earlier Senate decision. Decisions regarding mifepristone will now rest with the country's main drug regulator, the Therapeutic Goods Administration, which is expected to make the drug available in Australia within the year. More

More Global Feminist News

March is Women's History Month!
Plan global-themed events this month, and focus on educating your campus on the social, economic and political barriers to reproductive healthcare for women around the world. Campus Organizers are available to speak at events beginning in March 2006, and would love to help you organize an event about global women's and human rights issues. Call your Campus Organizer any time for event ideas or other questions. Also, make sure to download and circulate the new Restore Funding For UNFPA and Lift the Global Gag Rule petition!

Register Your School and Click to Fight Poverty!
Participate in the 2006 Oxfam America Collegiate Click Drive (February 13-March 31), a national online competition between colleges and universities to generate free donations for microcredit programs worldwide! Microcredit is a poverty fighting technique that provides small "micro-loans" to people in developing countries; on average, 4 out of 5 loans go to women worldwide. Microcredit programs touch on a broad range of social justice issues including the empowerment of women, the protection of the environment, the end of sweatshop labor, and the fight against the spread of global AIDS. Since its inception five years ago, the Click Drive has raised over $100,000 to help fight poverty around the world with hundreds of campuses participating. All donations are funded entirely by website sponsors -- participants click twice a day and pay nothing.

Visit www.povertyfighters.com for more information and to register your school for the drive. If you're interested in the campaign or have any questions, please email clickcontact@gmail.com!

First annual GenderYOUTH Leadership Summit
Come see what all of the excitement is all about! This May the GenderYOUTH Program of the Gender Public Advocacy Coalition is hosting the first annual GenderYOUTH Leadership Summit~ Death by Gender: Mobilizing Against Violence. Events include National Gender Lobby Day, the Great Big International Drag King Show, and a sneak peek screening of the film Straight Laced.

When: May 18-20, 2006
Where: Washington, DC
Who: College youth from across the country!
**Scholarships and group rates available**

Register today!

Find a feminist internship or post-graduate job!

Job Search Tips:

• Start your job search early!
• Begin to document your student activism in a folder or a binder. This is a great resource to have on interviews!