THE SAGE CHRONICLES: Chapter I

The SAGE Chronicles

Chapter I

My little corner of the internet has been quiet for quite some time, and it’s been bothering me. Driving me crazy. Nothing to keep you up at night like a blank canvas.

I’ve said a lot about the frustration of simply writing about gender-inequality-related issues when there is so much actual, physical, practical work to be done.  Well, over the past year, I’ve found it easy to be diverted from writing this blog because of a real life, tangible, organized project I have been oh-so-lucky to be a part of. 

Fall 2011.  Classes were starting up again, and a group of my brilliant friends approached me with their intention to start a gender equality organization on our campus. Obviously, I wanted in. In recent years, Loyola New Orleans’ only existing student-run organization of the sort and fallen ill and quietly died. 

One late night in the common room of my friends’ dorm, six of us sat around typing, discussing, backspacing, and typing again until we had a constitution.  My friends are self-motivated, organizational wizards.  They are smart cookies.  In no time we had two faculty advisors, officer titles/duties, a regular meeting schedule. And ideas! So many ideas.  All that real, big kid stuff.

Finding a name was the next order of business.  We plowed through a bunch of really stupid acronyms (most of which were suggested and fiercely defended by me) until Jenni, officer and resident artist, came up with SAGE: Student Advocates for Gender Equality.

And so we began.  General meetings were held every other Wednesday night at which we discussed whichever gender-equality-related topic we’d put on our posters for that particular meeting.  Now, attendance wasn’t groundbreaking by any means, but it was diverse, and sizable, and, most importantly, good enough to afford us some interesting discussions. 

I’m not even going to pretend I know all of the intricacies and inner workings of SAGE.  It took a bunch of people to get this on its feet. Marlee Clayton became our Treasurer.  My hat is off to her because the idea of the Student Government Association Fund Allocations process and all the incomprehensible stuff that comes with it make me want to take a nap.  Maddy Crabtree valiantly took up Director of Activities.  Jenni Austiff’s artistic talent was harnessed (mostly for poster-making), making her Director of Marketing. I am currently the Secretary.  I do lots of writing of stuff, but certainly not all of the writing of stuff.  Morgan Whittler and Beth Cook are our Co-Presidents, and they make an excellent team. Award-winning, in fact.

So, this is what we started with.  This and a whole bunch of ideas.  And from here we jumped off into an inaugural year full of encouragement, backlash, hip hop, magazine clippings, missing punctuation, economics professors, and lots of other strange little pieces that came together in such fascinating ways. All of which I will regale you with soon. 

I will try my best to do them justice. 

-E