Updated: Oct. 21, 2024, at 8:54 p.m.
Student Government Association Senate Pro Tempore Liz Stoddard will lead the inaugural meeting for the body’s women’s caucus this month, commencing her efforts to enact legislation for reproductive health care rights and expand on-campus resources for sexual assault survivors.
Stoddard said she wanted to continue former SGA Senate Pro Tempore Amy Cowley’s efforts in 2023 to create tangible policy items within the SGA “for women, by women” and address gender disparities within the body and on campus. She said hosting caucus meetings will give female SGA members a chance to foster conversations about issues, like campus access to medication abortion and amplify the voices of the SGA’s female leadership to encourage more women to run for positions.
“It’s really important to at least have a woman-dominated conversation on women’s issues, and it’s also a safe place where women can be honest and talk about their issues with the organization, one that has been exclusionary in previous years,” Stoddard said.
Cowley created the caucus in 2023 as a gender equity resource group within the SGA Senate’s Committee on Community, Advocacy and Inclusion. Stoddard said Cowley planned to have the caucus meet last semester, but the initiative didn’t get “off the ground” because of time constraints during the 2024 SGA election season.
“I want to make sure that every part of it is following both her outlook, which was such a positive and inclusive and kind outlook, that that is all transferred over to the way that we run this caucus,” Stoddard said.
Stoddard said the number of women in the SGA Senate has increased by 15 percent this year, with 42 percent of senator positions — 18 of the total 42 filled seats — held by women. She said a pattern of colleagues “putting their names” on legislation about women’s rights on campus in an effort to gain personal leverage is “not new” within campus governing bodies including the SGA.
“It doesn’t matter if it’s written by a man or if it’s written by a woman, but the goal should always be when you’re putting your name on a piece of legislation, it is because you know it, you support it, and you can defend it, and you believe it will do something important for this campus, not because it gets you anything,” Stoddard said.
Last year, female SGA members including Stoddard and former SGA President Arielle Geismar reported that other SGA members and the public often doubted their leadership capabilities and questioned their authority in the body, which has historically lacked female representation.
Stoddard said this year’s influx of female senators and leaders in the SGA, like Katelyn Moon, the legislative branch chief of staff, and Mimi DeRossett, the executive branch chief of staff, are “improvements” in representation, but there is still “so much more left to do” to ensure the SGA is truly representative of GW’s majority-female population.
Stoddard said the caucus will meet for the first time Oct. 26 and two additional times during the semester.
Stoddard said she hopes the women’s caucus will discuss implementing a transportation fund to help victims of sexual violence travel to hospitals where they can receive rape kits and medical attention. The GW Title IX website directs victims to the Washington Hospital Center — a hospital located more than three miles from GW’s campus — to receive medical attention following a sexual assault.
Stoddard said she “can’t imagine” asking a rape victim to travel 30 minutes to receive the medical care they need. She said she hopes the caucus can work together at meetings to develop tangible policies that will help pay for victims’ transportation costs and push GW to “make it easier” for students to obtain rape kits.
“I can think of nothing more painful than putting barriers between someone who’s experienced a traumatic and criminal act and put barriers to them seeking justice,” Stoddard said.
She said she will invite “women-dominated organizations,” like Reproductive Autonomy and Gender Equity and GW Students Against Sexual Assault, to the November meeting to hear directly what female advocacy groups on campus want to see from the SGA and GW officials.
Stoddard added that meetings are open to all members of the SGA including the executive, judicial and legislative branches and she has advertised the caucus during full senate meetings and via email to ensure the entire body is aware of the first meeting.
SGA Sen. Samantha Knister (ESIA-U) said she plans to attend caucus meetings and hopes the group’s discussions can foster new ideas and strengthen existing ones that have been raised at previous SGA Senate meetings but have not had a platform to garner support from other senators. She said she wants to use discussions in the caucus to further an idea from SGA Sen. Mehrshad Devin (SMHS-G), who has raised the idea of providing childcare for mothers enrolled in GW’s graduate programs at “multiple” senate meetings.
“It is definitely also our goal to hear what’s already been said and take action and not forget about those things that have already been raised,” Knister said.
SGA Sen. Jorey Reyes (ESIA-U) said she is looking forward to the caucus’s “launch period” and the official start of meetings. She said during her time as an SGA senator this year and as a legislative assistant last year she has had an “overwhelmingly positive experience as a woman” but said she acknowledges this reality was not always the case for past women in the SGA.
“You can’t erase a history of exclusion or a history of bad behavior, but it’s important that, as a woman in this organization, but also as a member of this organization, that we are better,” Reyes said.
This post has been updated to correct the following:
A previous version of this post misspelled Katelyn Moon’s first name. We regret this error.
