High-profile guests aren’t only for the high-profile students at the high-profile campuses. In 1984, students at Chico State had the opportunity to hear from feminist icon and editor of Ms. Magazine, Gloria Steinem.
In her lecture titled “Women in the Eighties: The Second Wave,” Steinem emphasized that institutional changes were still needed and provided examples of male dominance in society, according to an article published in The Orion 42 years ago to this day.
“What if you could get a spinster of arts degree?” she said. “Or a sistership instead of a fellowship? How about a mistress of science degree?”
Steinem’s lecture to a predominantly female audience in Laxson Auditorium outlined four themes — establishing reproductive freedom as a basic right for women around the world, all productive human labor being valued as work, questioning the uses of cultural institutions and realizing that violence is never an acceptable way of solving conflicts.
Another March 14 issue — this one published 25 years ago — reported on the CSU system suspending study abroad programs to Israel. Following the start of the Second Intifada, all students in the country were advised to return to the U.S., though some students stayed, and it was a decision that would be repeated 22 years later.
The violence seen throughout the late 1990s and early 2000s was echoed in a first-person account of fearing school due to recent escalations in school violence. A sophomore at De Anza Junior College was arrested for planning a campus attack, and journalism major and Orion writer Jason Goldman-Hall reflected on how the student was a friend of his, and on the knowledge that an attack could happen anywhere.
“The shooter wasn’t some unhinged psychopath. He was an exceptionally smart, quiet student,” Goldman-Hall wrote. “He was an editor on an award-winning yearbook. He wrote e-mails to his friends when they were stressed out, and he avoided any kind of conflict or tension. I know all of this because he was a friend of mine. We grew up together in San Jose, shared many of the same friends and worked on the yearbook together.
“When news of what happened reached me up here in Chico, I said all the cliche things people say when this sort of thing happens,” he continued. “I became the people I saw on television: ‘I didn’t think it could ever happen.’ I came to the realization that it can, and sadly, does happen. My friends at De Anza could have been hurt.”
Flipping to the entertainment section of the newspaper, the student-run KCSC radio station was celebrated for its 50 years of operations.
“In the spring of 1951, a radio class in the speech and drama department started reproducing old-time dramas on the public address system throughout campus 15 hours a week,” wrote Jane Dick, a staff writer. “After shutting down and starting up again in the late ’50s, KCSC started playing music. Not any kind of music, but the music that transformed and reshaped America and rock ‘n’ roll.”
By 2001, the station had 55 returning DJs and 15 new ones, and hosted a total of 48 live shows throughout the day, with a random selection of new releases playing overnight.
Archives of The Wildcat and The Orion can be found online and in the Meriam Library on campus.
