The work was not over when the conference was over. The goal was to
produce policy recommendations in each area covered. There was a general
resolution directed toward the elimination of sexism and racism in public
higher education in Wisconsin.12 The rest of the resolutions and drafts of
papers concerned specific actions and changes.
The first step was to integrate the material into documents for different
purposes. A summary was prepared for the regents and a longer report to
Vice President Donald Percy in his capacity as equal employment opportunity
officer for the UW System. One recommendation was the establishment of a
systemwide task force that would study classified personnel problems in
depth. Another document was prepared on the status of academic staff
women. This was sent to the systemwide committee working on academic
staff personnel rules.
The documents had mixed effects. The academic staff recommendations
were studied by the task force formulating academic staff rules. One side
effect was that the paper served to stimulate organization of a group on
the
Madison campus to develop and protect academic staff job rights. Our recep-
tion by the regents this time was much more cordial, and some of our recom-
mendations are echoed in a strong "Restatement of Policy on Equal Employ-
ment Opportunity" adopted August 15, 1975. The report to and subsequent
meeting with Vice President Percy was moderately hopeful.
The recommendation for forming a classified staff task force was never
carried out. The administrators believed that the problems listed were in-
dividual problems to be dealt with by supervisory personnel, not problems
that called for any major changes in personnel rules or workforce structure.
Affirmative action, it was believed, was not the province of personnel direc-
tors.
It is undoubtedly the attitude of these administrators that explained the
fact that the classified task force staff never came into being. It was sup-
posedly about to, several times, but as WCCWHE began to lose its steam, in-
quiries about when it would be formed came no more and the matter is now
buried in the files.
Activity Drops Off to - Hibernation?
The depressing fate of promised action on behalf of classified staff marks
the chapter of WCCWHE history that goes from summer, 1975, through fall,
1979. This part is brief, not because the issues were no longer there and
nothing was happening, nor because there weren't people trying to make
things happen, but because progress was not being made. Many CC members
were suffering from burn-out, and few new women were coming forward to
take their place.
Very soon after the high of the Lake Delton conference, in March of
1975, one letter spoke of the campus organizations as becoming moribund,
of
"the original momentum, solidarity, and commitment which feminists had
na-
tionally several years ago. . being replaced by apathy, discouragement,
despair."'13 She went on, "As academic women in particular see
their efforts
constantly frustrated, see repeated failures to bring about significant changes
in their institutions, see that cutbacks and layoffs throughout education
are
rapidly taking away the little we have so laboriously gained, at such heavy
personal cost, many of us are losing heart. Our energies are depleted. We
are,


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