The Women’s Society of Washington University presented “Composing a Life” Tuesday night, an event featuring a panel of five female speakers from the University or St. Louis community.
The speakers shared their various experiences in front of a primarily female audience, delivering the message that there is no one single way for women to succeed today.
“There are many ways to achieve a satisfying, rewarding career, and we like to give several examples,” Ida Early, coordinator for the Women’s Society and secretary to the board of trustees, said. “The intent is to get women, who are successful and who haven’t gone in a straight line path to what they’re doing, to talk about those bumps along the road.”
For panel speaker Kacie Starr Triplett, the determination to overcome her greatest challenges led her to a successful life and career.
“Life is an obstacle course, and you’re going to go through those hurdles, and it’s up to you if you’re going to get up,” Triplett said. “I may not have gone through the hurdles the best way, but in the end I finished the obstacle course.”
Triplett, a property owner and once a small business owner, dedicated much of her life to public service and became the youngest member to be elected to the St. Louis Board of Aldermen in 2007.
Becca Schenk, a sophomore who attended the event, said she enjoyed listening to the speakers discuss difficulties from their experiences and how they succeeded.
“It was interesting to see the unpredictable things life throws at you and how that shaped these women’s courses,” Schenk said.
“Composing a Life” had approximately 170 registered attendants, a large turnout for an event hosted by a group that has kept a relatively low visibility at the University since its inception in the mid-1960s.
“We [the Women’s Society] started in about 1965 for the purpose of really creating better town and gown relations and to have people in the community become interested and involved in the life of the University,” Early said.
Along with connecting the St. Louis community to the University, the Women’s Society also focused on supporting students at the University.
According to Early, the group initially geared many of its efforts toward helping international students transition into and acclimate to the University community and the country.
In 1969, the Women’s Society opened a foods market called the Uncommon Market in the basement of the Women’s Building. The market, which supplied a variety of international foods, closed down in 1996 as a result of dwindling sales.
The Women’s Society, however, still continues to have a hand in business on campus. Unbeknownst to many University students, the group has owned and run Bear Necessities in the Wohl Center on the South 40 since the late 1960s.
“The profits go to help Women’s Society programs. We do funding for student projects on an application process,” Early said.
The group also funds the Elizabeth Gray Danforth Scholarship, which supports two students who are transferring from community colleges.
Through its funding of individual students and student initiatives, such as Dance Marathon, Give Thanks Give Back and Service First, the Women’s Society hopes to help University students develop strong leadership skills, Early said.
Despite its name, the group’s mission has little to do with advocating specific women’s issues.
“It is kind of an old fashioned name and was typical for the era. We’ve gunned long and hard in thinking about whether we should change it to something modern, but we’ve decided recently that we have been invested in this name,” Early said. “It’s our name and we’re just going to stick with it.”
The Women’s Society is comprised of approximately 600 women from the St. Louis area. Some are University alumni or staff while most are local women interested in investing their time in the University community.
Undergraduate presence in the Women’s Society is limited, partly because members have to pay a fee, according to Early. The lack of student representation, however, is no obstacle for the group as long as it can uphold its goals.
“We tend to go volunteer more for student projects more so than students come to volunteer for us,” Early said. “I think what we want to do is to work with students to do what they need.”
With additional reporting by Perry Stein
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