A Tech Trek Reward

By Lisa Newhall

Here is letter I received from Janneth Velasquez, one of our first Tech Trek girls. I am so proud of her! I will contact her and try to meet with her before she leaves for school. Too bad she won’t be here for our September brunch!

Hi Lisa,
It is great to hear from you! Of course I look back and remember all the memories I had from Tech Trek. This was the first organization that motivated me about school. I still have the pictures and a couple of things I did when I was in Tech Trek.

There is so much I would like to let you know about my senior year, all the great things I did, my accomplishments, and my ups and downs I had. I’ll start off with what college I will be attending. I will be attending Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Massachusetts and will be majoring in the field of Chemical Engineering. Throughout my senior year I received a Marshall Chavez scholarship from WPI of $82,000. I also received the RIMS AVID scholarship of $3,000 renewable for four years and I was the only one to receive this scholarship from the Riverside County. I was also awarded $1,000 from the Firehouse Assistance League and $600 from the Emblem Club. I am an official National Honor’s Society member and a CSF member as well. I was also involved in AVID for five years and two years as an AVID Tutor. Being involved as an AVID Tutor for two years I was able to have a job lined up in Massachusetts when I arrive there. I accomplished so much in a year. I graduated with a 3.5 GPA and I was involved in so many things in school from sports to clubs, to even being part of representing my school at a school board meeting.

Thank-you for still being in touch with me. I hope that before I leave in August we can get together so I can share with you and maybe the 2009 Tech Trek girls my experiences and listen to their experiences as well. I also want to thank Riverside AAUW because they were the encouragement I needed for school; they were what started to shape my life, and what also became part of my high school success.

Thank-you Lisa and Riverside AAUW.

Sincerely,
Janneth Velazquez

Sotomeyer Hearings

Judge Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation hearings with the Senate Judiciary Committee are set to begin tomorrow, July 13. The hearing is scheduled to start at 10 a.m. ET, with Judge Sotomayor expected to give her opening statement at approximately 2 p.m ET. The hearings are expected to continue for several days, and will include testimony from several witnesses. If confirmed, Judge Sotomayor will become the first Hispanic and only the third woman Supreme Court justice. The Senate Judiciary Committee website has background on Judge Sotomayor and links to all materials the committee has received.

Title IX case settled

A recent class action lawsuit settlement between the University of California at Davis and the three female athletes who sued the university for a Title IX violation may raise the standards set by judges for Title IX compliance in courts around the U.S., the New York Times reports. Judges have generally agreed that universities are in compliance with Title IX if their athlete gender ratio is within five percent of the gender ratio of their general student body. But in the settlement announced in June that awaits approval by federal court, UC Davis has 10 years to equalize female athlete participation to within 1.5 percent of the overall student population. This standard represents a significant break from judicial precedent that may have a dynamic affect on judges' views of Title IX around the nation and, in turn, on the opportunities available for female college athletes. AAUW supported this case with an amicus brief to the court.

More on the Convention

THE BYLAWS
An amend-ment to the proposed Bylaws to keep the require-ments for


membership in AAUW the same as it’s been, was passed by a standing vote of 477 to 360 and a vote by multiple card count of 863 to 564. The rest of the Bylaws were passed by 1363-36 multiple card count vote, including the “one member, one vote" proposed change.
Later in the convention, a resolution was proposed to revisit open membership at the 2011 convention when every member would have a vote. A majority voted in favor of the resolution, but it did not receive the 3/4 required to pass.

THE OPENING OF THE CONVENTION


Ruth Sweetser called the convention to order. A beautifully played flute rendered the National Anthem and an honor guard of Girl Scouts led the flag salute. A few remarks were made by Ruth Sweetzer followed by a few more from Linda Hallman. Next came a video welcome message from White House Senior Advisor Valerie Jarrett. Jarrett extended a special greeting from President Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama and applauded AAUW’s commitment to gender equity, work-life balance, and education.


This was followed by a brief introduction of the keynote speaker by Lisa Maatz, AAUW Public Policy Director.


KEYNOTE SPEAKER LILLY LEDBETTER

Lilly spoke simply, but very effectively, telling her story of her mistreatment by Goodyear, her million dollar win in court, but the conviction overturned by the Supreme Court in a 5 to 4 vote. It made my hair stand on end and I had a choke in my throat. Lilly stayed for the whole convention and, sitting out in the hall, she spent many, many hours signing papers and everything else. She raised over $5,000.00 for the EF fund. Read more of Lilly’s speech. Lisa Maatz, “her partner in crime,” ended the session with a rousing cry to flood the telephones, mailboxes, e-mails of those senators (including Feinstein) to urge them to sign on to sponsor the Paycheck Fairness Act. The more signatures the bill receives, the better chance it has of passing.

ROSA DELAURO

Representative DeLauro took the stage to a standing ovation and gave a rousing, motivational speech praising the work of AAUW. She was the first one to introduce the Paycheck Fairness Act twelve years ago. “Do not underestimate the power of big ideas,” which she said in connection with making equal pay a reality. She pointed out that members of congress are all paid the same – equal pay for equal work – and that should be the reality for everyone. She ended by reading a quote from her mother written in 1933, “Come on girls. Let’s make ourselves heard.”

THE SHE-E-O FORUM
This Forum brought together speakers Erika Feinberg, CEO of Active Forever, and Arlene Harris, chair of the board of GreatCall, provider of the Jitterbug phone and cellular service, to share their perspectives on the challenges women face while working in male-dominated industries. Both women faced great challenges as women.



Arlene Harris said that her greatest challenge was getting financing. She often faces an attitude of, “Who wants to finance a woman?”



Erika Feinberg faced especially difficult challenges in becoming a CEO at age 25. She also mentioned the difference between store shopping (“emotional”) and online shopping (“more focused”). Both these women received our admiration and great applause. Read more.

THE BANQUET

The evening was filled with awards and recognitions, most notably, Lilly Ledbetter. Ruth Sweetser and Linda Hall presented her with a framed proclamation from President and Mrs. Obama and also a frame filled with AAUW symbols from all the states.



Also recognized was Wanda P. Hardy who received the 2009 Eleanor Roosevelt Fund Award as the founder and president of CreditWorthy, Inc, a financial education organization whose mission is, “Helping people of all ages develop the knowledge, skills, and confidence to manage their finances to achieve financial success.” Read more.


The speaker for the banquet was Jackie Speier (CA) who spoke of her experiences fighting for the improvement in the lives of women in the California Assembly and now recently in The House of Representatives. She mentioned that all members of the House of Representatives get paid the same – equal pay for equal work and that should become universal, not 87 cents to the dollar. She also spoke of the men’s bathroom being on the same floor as the House of Representatives, but the women’s bathroom being a floor below. It took 50 years to get a women’s bathroom on the same floor.

GENDER DISCRIMINATION IN THE WORKPLACE
The Sunday morning panel consisted of a lawyer (Irma Herrera), a doctor (Linda Brodsky), and an academic and author (Ruth O’Brien).

Irma Herrera recounted the obstacles overcome by the 6 teams of lawyers working on the Walmart gender discrimination lawsuit, the largest class action lawsuit in history with almost 2 million plaintiffs. Her group was front and center, and very involved. She also talked about an inflexible work environment modeled on the male-female societal roles negotiated 60 years ago and the need to make work more flexible with flex time, work at home, etc.


Linda Brodsky faced years of overt acts of discrimination by the University of Buffalo and Kaleida Health and she was fired for complaining. She finally sued and then settled with both institutions to the satisfaction of all. She said eloquently that gender discrimination in the healthcare industry is not limited to women physicians, but also affects women as patients and as caregivers. The far reaching consequences are beyond the issues of social justice and have a real impact on the public health. Wasted human resources translate into economic waste we can’t afford. Gender discrimination in healthcare is everyone’s problem.


Ruth O’Brien has studied the social justice issues in American politics and law. Her focus on women and gender discrimination is brilliantly set forth in her latest book, Telling Stories out of Court: Narratives about Women and Workplace Discrimination. Using a new approach, fictional stories that bring out the emotional aspects of the rather dry and often difficult to comprehend legal precepts, she was both innovative and inspiring.
Ruth O’Brien has studied the social justice issues in American politics and law. Her focus on women and gender discrimination is brilliantly set forth in her latest book, Telling Stories out of Court: Narratives about Women and Workplace Discrimination. Using a new approach, fictional stories that bring out the emotional aspects of the rather dry and often difficult to comprehend legal precepts, she was both innovative and inspiring.
Read more about the panel.

ELECTION RESULTS
AAUW President: Carolyn Garfein
AAUW Vice President: Gail Nordmoe
AAUW Directors-at-Large: Kathleen Cha, Alice Hetman, Connie M. Hildebrand, Patricia Ho, Jackie Littleton, Betsy McDowell, Linda Tozier

Read more about the Convention

St. Louis Convention

Here are pictures of the speakers at the Convention as well as many Californians who attended.

Don't forget that if you click on a picture, it will bring you to the album. Then you can click on "slideshow" and you can view the pictures on the full screen.

The National Convention Action On Line

The national convention will be June 26-28, and the hot topic of discussion will be the proposals for major changes in the association bylaws. We don't have many details, but there’s sure to be plenty of up-to-date information about the proceedings on the AAUW web site. You might also want to check the AAUW blog

And now there's Twitter as well. Convention delegates who are using Twitter will post about the convention. That means if you want to receive just the AAUW convention comments out of the real-time twitter stream, this twitter link should get to it for you.

I'll write about the convention when I return.

A Tour of Evergreen Memorial Historic Cemetery

Friday, June 19th a few from AAUW and about 30 others enjoyed a wonderful tour of the Evergreen Memorial Historic Cemetery led by Judge Victor Miceli. Before we started he gave us a brief history of the cemetery. It was founded in 1872 and the charter for the Cemetery Association was for 50 years only. So in 1932 the charter for the Association lapsed and no one was aware of that fact. In 1937, Articles of Re-incorporation were filed. For many years nothing was done for the upkeep of the cemetery and it went into great decline with a lot of vandalism. Many many headstones were overturned. Many were broken. Weeds took over the grounds. In 2002, Articles of Incorporation for the Evergreen Memorial Historic Cemetery were filed. This group, with the help of the City of Riverside, has redressed a large part of Evergreen’s neglect.

The judge described a low lying area where no bodies had been buried because it flooded whenever there was a rain and the area became a virtual lake. Eventually, drainage was put in which avoided the flooding and then plots were sold. Now, in the older section of the cemetery there is only one very small space that does not contain bodies that will be used to put in a lamppost, similar to the ones that have been put in the rest of the cemetery. In addition, curbs and gutters have been put in and a state of the art irrigation system installed.

The question of whether to put a fence around the cemetery was raised and the decision was made to have a 51/2 foot fence with 6 foot pilasters erected around the cemetery to make it well defined. Much other work had to be done. Many, many of the grave stones had been knocked over. Others had been vandalized or broken. Grass needed to be planted. Trees needed to be trimmed and dead ones removed. Thousands of hours have been put in to make the cemetery the way it is today and there is still much work to be done to restore the remainder of the cemetery. The aim is to get an endowment large enough to be able to maintain the cemetery with the interest, in perpetuity.

Then the tour began. We went to the old, historic section and saw a rather large monument with the name NORTH on it. John W. North was one of Riverside’s founders, but this was not his gravesite, but that of his son. North’s graveside was right next to it, but had a very simple grave stone. Not far away was the gravesite of Frank Augustus Miller who built the Mission Inn. His site was surrounded by his two wives, his parents, two of his sisters, his brother, and one of his grandchildren. A recent addition is a memorial marker put up by Duane Roberts with Frank Miller’s picture on it. We also saw the gravesite of a young girl named Shugart who was the first person to be buried at the cemetery. Other notable gravesites we saw were Luther and Eliza Tibbets whose two parent navel orange trees founded the entire orange industry in Southern California . We stopped by one gravesite and the marker had, “Baines” on it. The Judge asked us if that name meant anything to any of us and he got no reply. Then he asked if we had ever heard of Lyndon Baines Johnson? It turns out that a niece of President Johnson’s great grandfather (on his mother’s side) died in San Bernardino on a trip to visit her uncle (who died two years later and is also buried at Evergreen). No one knows why they are buried in Riverside County when they died in San Bernardino County. Judge Miceli showed us a rather impressive monument which he knocked on. It was hollow and made of cast bronze. He also explained that the marble monuments don’t last as well as the granite ones.

The tour ended in the unrefurbished section of the cemetery. Judge Miceli showed us an embankment that was eroding. The plan is to build a retaining wall. The final stop was in the mausoleum which is very beautiful , both outside and inside.

It is very worthwhile to take a walking tour of the cemetery. The Evergreen Memorial Historic Cemetery has a website with many pictures of how the Cemetery looked before the restoration and it also has a walking tour map which shows the burial sites of Riverside’s most notable historic figures.