The NORTH COUNTRY CONNECTION
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As you know, our branch has been working with women in the High Peaks area of the Adirondacks to expand AAUW. On Saturday, Nov. 10, you have the opportunity to support that effort with your presence as our branch hosts the District 7 Fall Conference in Saranac Lake at the North Country Community College. All the details, directions, and the registration form are located on the event flyer. Please plan to attend and be sure to get your RSVP in by Nov. 5.
In a return engagement, our special guest will be the Association's Lisa Maatz, last in the North Country in 2006 for a D-7 event. With the critical 2008 Presidential and Congressional election season getting underway, Lisa will give us the head's up on What's At Stake for Women in 2008! (And there is plenty!)
And Eileen Hartmann, the AAUW-NYS Membership VP (and candidate for state president for 2008-10) will be also be on hand to provide us with AAUW 101 - everything you ever wanted to know about AAUW. This will be a great introduction to AAUW for our many new members in the North Country. Our sister Branch in Jefferson County will also be with us that day. We hope to see you there!
First, I want to thank everyone who attended the Fall Membership meeting in Canton and helped to make it such a success. Thanks to our Vice President for Programming, Sue Bellor for setting up the event, and thanks to everyone who brought such great potluck dishes to share and lent a hand with set-up and clean-up. Special thanks, also, to Caroline Breashears for sharing her research on eighteenth-century women's memoirs with us, and to Alison Koch, our "Agent of Change" honoree. Kudos also to Donna Seymour, whose publicity efforts resulted in some excellent newspaper coverage of the challenges facing Alison's practice!
As many of you know, our branch recently lost a valued board member and friend in Anne Malone. We are still grieving her loss to cancer and greatly feel her loss to AAUW. Anne had served on our board as both Educational Foundation Vice President and as Membership Vice President. More than that, she was a guiding force for the branch, continually challenging us to find new ways to reach out to our membership community and beyond, to work together with other community groups to make St. Lawrence County a better place to live and work for women and girls.
Since I arrived in town in 2005, Anne continually made efforts to include me in the kinds of projects that were her passion-She invited me to my first AAUW meeting, encouraged me to run for a seat on the board, and made me an important part of the team that organized last December's very successful program on women in North Country politics: "Following in the Footsteps of Rhoda Fox Graves: Breaking Through the Glass Ceiling in North Country Politics." We made a trip to Gouverneur to pick up mementoes of Graves from the local historical society, we picked out costumes from the 1910's and 1920's for the students to wear as "suffragists" and "emancipated flappers," we ordered a great tea-and-cookies spread and constructed an amazing slide show about women's suffrage and women politicians. (She even convinced me to dress for the occasion as a marcher for "Votes for Women"!) She was a hard woman to say 'no.' to. Everyday I miss her practical advice, her wry laugh, her passion for the things she believed in. The branch is planning to further honor Anne's memory through some of our spring events.
I know that Anne would have been tremendously excited about the upcoming District Seven meeting in Saranac Lake, as am I. This event will bring together members from our St. Lawrence County branch, from our new "High Peaks" satellite branch based in Saranac Lake, and from the Jefferson County Branch based in Watertown. This will be a great chance for district members, old and new, to get to know one another and to learn more about AAUW's mission and future plans.
Eileen Hartman, Membership Vice President for New York State AAUW, will be on hand for programs and workshops; we will also have the added treat of hearing from Lisa Maatz, AAUW's chief lobbyist in Washington, DC, on key matters of public policy facing AAUW. I met Eileen last spring at the state convention in Saratoga Springs and I am looking forward to the focus and energy she is sure to bring to our meeting; I have also met Lisa and can tell you that she's a dynamic and engaging speaker who brings great passion, humor, and insight to her subject. We are tremendously lucky to have both of them, and lucky, also, to be part of a thriving district and branch attracting terrific new members.
I look forward to seeing you in Saranac Lake in November-Until then, keep warm and dry!
Best,
AAUW launched its newly redesigned website on September 17. The new site offers an updated look, as well as a streamlined structure that helps visitors locate information quickly. Finding all the tools you need to support AAUW's mission has never been easier! Visit AAUW.org to see the new site for yourself.
At our Fall Membership meeting, $105 was collected for LAF Basket that was raffled off. That money has been sent to AAUW-NYS in memory of Anne Righton alone, earmarked for the Evvie Currie Giving Circle which provides funds for campus outreach here in New York State!
On September 6, the 10th Circuit ruled in favor of LAF-supported plaintiff Lisa Simpson, concluding there was sufficient evidence for a jury to return a verdict in her favor and overturning the summary judgment in favor of the University of Colorado. Then, on September 20, Laura Violand prevailed against George Washington University's appeal when the appeals court judge upheld her $280,955 jury award for back pay damages. This decision is a major victory in light of the recent Supreme Court decision in Ledbetter.
Keep a lookout for the official release of LAF's newest research report, which is scheduled for publication this fall. The report examines complaints of sexual harassment filed with the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights (OCR) by students from higher education institutions and studies OCR's response to these complaints.
In November, LAF Director Lauren Kamnik will present the Women in Transition program at Charter Oak State College in Connecticut with the 2007 Progress in Equity Award. This award recognizes the college's efforts in providing higher education opportunities for low-income, underemployed single mothers to make the transition from low-paid work to a college degree through distance education, which makes education available without the costs and barriers of a specific time or place. The program will receive a $5,000 cash award. The University of Toledo, Ohio, received an honorable mention for its Leaders in Residence program.
LAF provides funding and a support system for women seeking judicial redress for sex discrimination.
Lilly Ledbetter will be the keynote speaker and the AAUW-NYS Convention on April 25-27, 2008 at the Otesaga Resort in Cooperstown NY.
Ms. Ledbetter was launched into the national spotlight when she sued Goodyear Tire & Rubber Company for unfair pay. A jury awarded her $223,776 in back pay and $3 million in punitive damages. She never received any money and ultimately the case was thrown out when the Supreme Court ruled that the 180 day filing limit had begun with the first check she received showing her lesser pay.
The House Ledbetter Fair Pay Act would return us to the longstanding rule (before the Supreme Court changed it in May), which treated each and every discriminatory paycheck as a new discrimination, thus re-starting the 180-day clock.
Lily Ledbetter recently spoke at the Buffalo Branch's September pot luck which was attended by over 150 members/guests. She told them AAUW has given her the most emotional support of all the organizations she has addressed since her suit began.
Our Branch lost a good friend, a mentor, a leader and an advocate with the passing of Anne Malone. Anne joined the St. Lawrence County Branch in 1999, the year after moving to Potsdam (arriving just in time for the Ice Storm!). In the few years she lived here in the North Country, she became an integral part of life in the community, the college and the branch.
Anne served us as Educational Foundation Vice President for four years and as the branch Membership Vice President, recently elected to her second two-year term at our annual meeting in June. Her years on the Board were marked by her constant search for ways to expand AAUW's outreach into the community, her ability to connect and collaborate with other groups and organizations, her never-ending search for equity, her support for education, and her overreaching desire to make thing better for girls and women of all ages and situations. We are much the better for her and her energy.
Anne always knew who she was, what she wanted to accomplish, and how to include and inspire others. Anne will be greatly missed for herself, her vision, and her ceaseless passion and capacity for positive change.
Anne died Monday (September 24, 2007) at her home in Potsdam while under the care of her family and of Hospice and Palliative Care of the St. Lawrence Valley. She is survived by her husband, Milner A. Grimsled; two daughters and sons-in-law, Kathy and Tony Procaccio of Woodridge, IL, Susan and Fernando Carrasco of Chino, CA; one daughter and her partner, Christine Mickles and David Strayer of Crown Point, IN; one son and daughter-in-law, Tom and Bonnie Mickles of Largo, FL; eleven grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.
Anne was born November 10, 1942 in Savannah, GA, the daughter of William Thomas Malone and Eleanor Weeks Malone. She graduated from Hammond High School, Hammond, IN, in 1960. She earned her Bachelor of Arts in English from Purdue University-Calumet Campus in 1975 and her Master of Arts in Composition Studies and Rhetorical Theory from the same institution in 1977. She earned her PhD in English from the University of New Hampshire in 1997. She married Milner A. Grimsled in Berkeley, CA on May 11, 1989.
Anne was hired at SUNY Potsdam as an Assistant Professor, later promoted to Associate Professor, in the English and Communication Department. During her tenure she was also Director of the College Writing Center (1998-2001) and Director of the Women and Gender Studies Program (2001-2007) which was granted status as a "major" in 2006. She also served as Chair of the SUNY Potsdam Faculty Senate from 2005 until her death.
She was deeply involved in community organizations in the North Country, serving as a board member of the Potsdam Food Co-op for six years and as its newsletter co-editor for nine years. She was a board member of Cinema 10, as well as the current Branch Membership Vice-President for the St. Lawrence County Branch of the American Association of University Women. She also served on the worship committee of the Canton Unitarian-Universalist Church.
In her own words, she wished to be remembered as "an unruly woman who passionately loved her husband and family, and who devoted her life to teaching and research, to creating social change, and to planting lushly unkempt gardens."
The family requests memorial gifts may be designated for the Anne Righton Malone Fund for Women's and Gender Studies and sent (payable) to Potsdam College Foundation, SUNY Potsdam, Raymond Hall 5th Floor, Potsdam, NY 13676.
Here are just a few things ... YOU can do as a member of the St. Lawrence County Branch of AAUW:
On September 27, President George W. Bush signed into law the College Cost Reduction and Access Act (H.R. 2669), a bill that will cut interest rates on subsidized federal loans in half over the next five years, contain college costs, and make student loan payments more manageable for borrowers. It will also increase the maximum Pell Grant scholarship by $1,090 over the next five years and provide loan forgiveness to a number of graduates who choose to become public servants. AAUW is proud to have been on the front lines of this legislation, with AAUW members using our Two-Minute Activist online to show their support to their members of Congress.
Thanks to the hard work of AAUW members and our coalition partners, the Senate passed the Matthew Shepard Local Law Enforcement Hate Crimes Prevention Act as an amendment to the defense authorization bill (H.R. 1585) on September 27. The measure will strengthen the federal response to hate crimes and provide grants to support states and local communities in combating violent crimes.
The House passed (voice vote) a third temporary extension (H.R. 3927) of the Higher Education Act recently, giving Congress until April 30, 2008 to pass a final extension of the law (PL-109-81). It is unlikely that new legislation will be enacted by Congress this year, as all of the 2008 appropriations bills must be passed before Congress adjourns for the year.
The American Association of University Women advances equity for women and girls through advocacy, education and research. AAUW will be a powerful advocate and visible leader in equity and education through research, philanthropy, and measurable change in critical areas impacting the lives of women and girls.
In principle and practice AAUW values and seeks a diverse membership. There shall be no barriers to full participation in this organization on the basis of gender, race, creed, age, sexual orientation, national origin, disability, or class.
The AAUW Educational Foundation provides funds to advance education, research, and self-development for women and to foster equity and positive societal change.
The AAUW Legal Advocacy Fund provides funding and a support system for women seeking judicial redress for sex discrimination.