WEBVTT 00:00:00.000 --> 00:00:01.000 Music. 00:00:01.000 --> 00:00:09.000 When women gained the right to vote they did not enter into a perfect system. 00:00:09.000 --> 00:00:13.000 Many women were excluded from voting rights. 00:00:13.000 --> 00:00:20.000 Native Americans, Japanese and Chinese women, African American women, many mixed race women. 00:00:20.000 --> 00:00:27.000 But as the decades passed many of those obvious barriers fell. 00:00:27.000 --> 00:00:38.000 And a special thanks today to the faculty and students of Western Oregon University for their respect and research of that history. 00:00:38.000 --> 00:00:43.000 That history of the women's vote in our state and our country. 00:00:43.000 --> 00:00:50.000 Thanks to them we will all now be better informed voters. 00:00:50.000 --> 00:00:52.000 Votes for women! 00:00:58.000 --> 00:00:68.000 They all did research about the history or women's suffrage nationally internationally and also in Oregon. 00:01:08.000 --> 00:01:15.000 Then we worked with our community partner the Oregon Women's History Consortium so they are posted on that website. 00:01:15.000 --> 00:01:23.000 And a really great thing that the students did was to present their research at an evening at the Oregon state capital. 00:01:23.000 --> 00:01:28.000 I really enjoyed speaking to people at the capital building during the event 00:01:28.000 --> 00:01:32.000 because it really helped me understand my own project further. 00:01:32.000 --> 00:01:42.000 What I learned from my research that I didn't know before was that Dr. Esher Pohl Lovejoy actually wasn't a prohibitionist she was a democrat. 00:01:42.000 --> 00:01:46.000 I also learned that there was a prohibitionist party in itself. 00:01:46.000 --> 00:01:53.000 What I will take away from this project is that women suffrage was not an easy achievement. 00:01:53.000 --> 00:01:61.000 It was a long battle that women really fought to achieve and women should not take their voting rights lightly. 00:02:01.000 --> 00:02:07.000 I learned how quickly women in Oregon actually used their role and ability to 00:02:07.000 --> 00:02:12.000 vote and run for office and do a lot of activist work and really make change very quickly. 00:02:12.000 --> 00:02:17.000 We researched newspaper articles from the 1920s and I really had no 00:02:17.000 --> 00:02:23.000 idea you could do things like key word searching from you know century old newspaper articles. 00:02:23.000 --> 00:02:29.000 My research project looked at extracurricular activities and clubs at the Oregon Normal School 00:02:29.000 --> 00:02:33.000 which was the name for Western Oregon University back when it was a teacher training school. 00:02:33.000 --> 00:02:38.000 And I specifically looked at how these extracurricular activities and clubs 00:02:38.000 --> 00:02:44.000 helped young women develop skills they would need to be active participants in society. 00:02:44.000 --> 00:02:50.000 Something I learned from my research that was really interesting was kind of this transformation these girls underwent while they were at school. 00:02:50.000 --> 00:02:56.000 They gained this skill and experience that allowed them to really have poise in those situations and make a difference for society. 00:02:56.000 --> 00:02:63.000 For my research project, I looked into what Latino women were doing in Oregon in the early 1900's 00:03:03.000 --> 00:03:07.000 specifically with the hope of finding out if they were involved in the suffrage movement. 00:03:07.000 --> 00:03:12.000 I learned what American people thought about Mexican women and Mexican people in general 00:03:12.000 --> 00:03:17.000 and then I also learned what newspaper columnists thought was worth writing about. 00:03:17.000 --> 00:03:22.000 So out of the research that I did my favorite article, it was titled The Mexican Senorita, 00:03:22.000 --> 00:03:28.000 and it was just about the classic Mexican girl and how she was different from like a classic American girl. 00:03:28.000 --> 00:03:34.000 And it really highlighted the perspective that the editorial had about Mexican women. 00:03:34.000 --> 00:03:41.000 Projects like this allow us to see how young people become young professionals 00:03:41.000 --> 00:03:46.000 and take on the responsibilities of becoming tomorrow's leaders today. 00:03:46.000 --> 00:03:52.000 I'd like us to also take time to envision for ourselves what kind of society can be created 00:03:52.000 --> 00:03:57.000 through robust, engaged, nonviolent exercise of the vote. 00:03:57.000 --> 00:03:61.000 Those visions are worth struggling and voting for today. 00:04:01.000 --> 00:04:07.000 It is kind of remarkable to think it was 98 years, it's only been 98 years ago 00:04:07.000 --> 00:04:12.000 that the idea of women voting meant for some of its opponents 00:04:12.000 --> 00:04:16.000 nothing less then the moral collapse of the nation, right? 00:04:16.000 --> 00:04:20.000 There was a price that was paid that what we're standing here to talk about tonight 00:04:24.000 --> 00:04:30.000 and how important that was that has benefited all of us who are sitting here. 00:04:30.000 --> 00:04:37.000 The community collaboration with all the other historians and political leaders around Oregon 00:04:37.000 --> 00:04:43.000 was really important because for me it just made me so much more passionate about my study they were interested in it. 00:04:43.000 --> 00:04:50.000 Community research now and hopefully in the future will continue to be the backbone of what higher education is about. 00:04:50.000 --> 00:04:53.000 What we see is when you take on responsibility for not only working 00:04:53.000 --> 00:04:56.000 with others on a project but working with 00:04:56.000 --> 00:04:59.000 the community, you erase the boundaries that have historically been there 00:04:59.000 --> 00:04:64.000 between the so-called town and gown division and those have 00:05:04.000 --> 00:05:07.000 always been false, always been fabricated and what's so wonderful 00:05:07.000 --> 00:05:11.000 is to see how today's youth have never really perceived that division. 00:05:11.000 --> 00:05:15.000 And this is lively, vital work for them and for us. 00:05:15.000 --> 00:05:21.000 The students also participated in interviews with historians and current women leaders 00:05:21.000 --> 00:05:24.000 about the importance of the vote. 00:05:24.000 --> 00:05:27.000 When we went to the capital building, I was able to see 00:05:27.000 --> 00:05:32.000 some of the graduates from Western and specifically the honors program 00:05:32.000 --> 00:05:33.000 who work at the capitol building. 00:05:33.000 --> 00:05:40.000 So it was though the alumni in the past met the students who are going to be them in the future 00:05:40.000 --> 00:05:44.000 to provide this continuity between the students of the past 00:05:44.000 --> 00:05:47.000 and current. And it was one of the triumphant experiences 00:05:47.000 --> 00:05:52.000 we 've had in honors, five years ago and also today. 00:05:52.000 --> 00:05:56.000 Music.