Content Warning: The following timeline includes mentions of sexual violence and discrimination. Please skip this timeline if that content feels too heavy for you right now. Should you want to talk with someone about this timeline or other matters related to interpersonal violence or mental health, please reach out to PWC.
Celebrating the Penn Women’s Center’s 25th anniversary during the 1990s, staff members and students associated with the PWC became increasingly involved with campus politics, national movements, and the passage of legislation.
Resurgence of “Take Back the Night” Rallies in 1990
Began in 1975 on a nation-wide level after the murder of Susan Alexander Speeth in Philadelphia, Penn did not see a “Take Back the Night” rally again until March 26, 1990. 400 students overtook the College Green to share publicly their experiences with sexual harassment and assault on campus. Following this, students marched to President Sheldon Hackney’s house roaring, “Stop rape now!” and “Take back Locust Walk!” — reigniting a campus-wide demand for physical safety.
The “Diversify Locust Walk” Movement in 1990
In response to the prevalence of sexual harassment perpetrated by fraternity members living on Locust Walk, much of the student population voiced opinions that the main artery of campus should not be contained exclusively to Greek life. As the campus community debated this issue, student activists pushed the administration on what Locust Walk meant to them: “If Penn intended to move beyond merely attracting a diversity of students, faculty and staff towards creating and maintaining a genuinely heterogeneous and pluralistic community of equal access and opportunity, it could no longer ignore the symbol and the reality of exclusivity and, too often, incivility, that stood at its physical heart… If Locust Walk’s significance lay in its reflection of the University as a whole, then the University’s commitment to the diversity of its population needed to be matched by its commitment to create, in its central core, an atmosphere conducive to diversity.”
Passage of the “Violence Against Women Act” in 1994
The local demands of Penn students found massive structural support on the national stage with the passage of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) of 1994. Drafted by then-senator Joseph Biden, VAWA was the first federal legislation to address domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking as crimes. Furthermore, the federal government allocated $1.6 billion to train police officers, hire more prosecutors, establish victim service initiatives. In the year following the passage of VAWA, the Office on Violence Against Women (OVW) was created in 1995 as a part of the Department of Justice. The OVW established the National Domestic Violence Hotline and required that protection orders had to be enforced across state lines. Since the passage of VAWA in 1994, the legislation has been reauthorized four more times to update and expand its protections.
Penn Women’s Center Moves to Locust Walk in 1996
Six years after Penn students demanded that the heart of campus needed change, the “Diversify Locust Walk” movement achieved its more concrete, permanent victory. In 1996, under the leadership of Ellie DiLapi, the Penn Women’s Center officially relocated from Houston Hall to the former fraternity house of Theta Xi at 3643 Locust Walk. Relocating a central resource for survivors directly within fraternity row was both a disruption and monumental reclamation of space.
Born and raised in Philadelphia, Rodin earned a fully-funded scholarship to attend Penn for her undergraduate studies. Nearly thirty years after graduating, Rodin returned to Penn to serve as the institution's seventh president. Notably, she was the first woman to serve as a permanent President of an Ivy League institution. During her tenure, she oversaw the PWC's move to Locust Walk and supported the operations of the PWC as President.
Founder of Students Together Against Acquaintance Rape (STAAR), Erica Strohl was one of most notable undergraduate student activists at Penn until her graduation from in 1991. Remarkably, Strohl was a part of the "Diversify Locust Walk" committee that promoted making the main thoroughfare of campus a safe and lively community for all Penn students. Before beginning her senior year, Strohl was invited by Senator Joseph Biden to testify to Congress about the effects of rape and sexual assault on survivors. Three years after Strohl's testimony, the Senate legislated the Violence Against Women Act.
Throughout the 1990s, undergraduate and graduate student organizers were a driving force behind the cultural shift at Penn. Because of the resurgence of "Take Back the Night" rallies and demands to diversify the main thoroughfare of campus, activists challenged the presence of dominating presence of fraternities on Locust Walk. In tandem with the Penn Women's Center, their collective mobilization garnered the support of administrators required to increase the safety of campus.
PWC Director Ellie DiLapi and Associate Director Gloria Gay travelled to Washington D.C. in May 1992 to present their findings at the Third Women’s Policy Research Conference. Continuing upon their research shared at the National Coalition Against Sexual Assault Conference in Philadelphia in 1989, they hosted a panel and program on how to incorporate anti-racism training into workplaces that assist survivors of rape and sexual assault.
The conference was centered on the intersections of race, gender, and economic disadvantages. More conferences and discussions within feminist circles incorporated language and discourse surrounding Crenshaw’s concept of “intersectionality” – for many women face different obstacles to equality based on race, socioeconomic status, age, and physical ability.
Within a broader context, the early 1990s within the United States was a volatile time for women’s rights and progress. In 1991, Anita Hill testified in front of the Senate Judiciary Committee to challenge the nomination of Clarence Thomas to the U.S. Supreme Court, accusing Thomas of sexually harassing her when he was her supervisor at work.
In the following year, 1992 was dubbed as the “Year of the Woman” for many reasons. The mass election of women into Congress emerged after Hill’s televised testimony, as many women voters were outraged by the treatment of Hill by the Senate Judiciary Committee. Following this, many women across the country took the initiative to run for office. Within the year, four women were elected as U.S. Senators and twenty-four were elected as U.S. Representatives — this was an all-time record in the early 1990s.
In 1996, when the Penn Women’s Center moved from Houston Hall into the former fraternity house of Theta Xi in 1996, it was not simply an administrative relocation. Claiming a central, visible location on Locust Walk was a disruption to what had been on the main thoroughfare.
However, the construction of Locust Walk itself throughout the 1960s and 1970s requires further context. The creation of the pedestrian thoroughfare was part of Penn’s broader expansion into West Philadelphia, a process that profoundly reshaped and displaced existing Black communities. Most notably, the neighborhood known as Black Bottom was a predominantly Black working-class community located immediately west of Penn’s campus. Residents had established homes, churches, businesses, and social networks in the area, creating a vibrant community that existed well before Penn’s expansion. Beginning in the 1950s and accelerating through the 1960s and 1970s, however, urban renewal and University expansion led to the demolition of homes and displacement of residents. Penn acquired substantial amounts of property as it expanded westward, replacing portions of the existing neighborhood with academic buildings, residences, and campus infrastructure. The construction of Locust Walk was consequently part of a larger transformation of the neighborhood’s physical and social landscape.
To further understand the gravity of the move to 3643 Locust Walk in 1996, the landscape of federal politics in the mid-1990s explains this. Throughout the decade, the United States was reckoning with legislating long-overdue laws addressing gender-based violence. Most remarkably, President Bill Clinton signed the landmarked Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) of 1994. VAWA was groundbreaking because it shifted sexual assault and domestic violence from a “private family matter” to a crime. From 1994 to 2000, the federal government allocated $1.6 billion toward training police officers, hiring more prosecutors, and establishing victim service initiatives. Important legislation such as VAWA propelled the mission of the PWC.
Prior to the authorization of VAWA, the Student Right-to-Know and Campus Security Act of 1990 (later renamed the Clery Act) was beginning to exert immense pressure on higher education institutions. For the first time, universities were federally mandated to alert students and faculty of campus crime statistics, including sexual assault. Suddenly, the rampant “fraternity row” rap culture that student activists had protested decades prior could no longer be ignored for universities’ administrations – it was a federal liability.
This shift on a federal level provided immense institutional leverage. The passage of VAWA and the Clery Act meant that universities like Penn could no longer afford to underfund campus organizations dedicated to the safety of students – particularly for women. Where initiatives to address the safety of students and faculty was once invisible, federal funding and compliance made it visible.
Revealed by Penn President Harold Stassen in 1948, a plan for a pedestrian-only path through the center of campus was underway. Stassen noted that after the conversion of parts of Locust Street into Locust Walk, Penn would be “one of the most beautiful metropolitan campuses in the world. The plan will result in a campus that is both utilitarian and beautiful.” Construction on the intersections of Locust Street with 36th and 37th Streets began in the summer of 1960. By 1972, Locust Walk from 34th to 40th Streets was completely converted into a pedestrian walkway.
Before the construction of Locust Walk, fraternity houses dominated Locust Street beginning in 1900. The demands of the “Diversify Locust Walk” movement in the early 1990s at Penn demanded for the central route through campus to decentralize the presence of Greek Life. For women students, queer students, and students of color, the main path through campus was a hostile environment. After a series of complaints from students about how exclusionary Greek Life was on Locust Walk.
The breaking point for many student activists occurred in the spring of 1990, following intense student demonstrations and a surge of formal complaints regarding targeted sexual harassment and alienation along the walk. As a direct response to the renaissance of “Take Back the Night” rallies, the university administration officially commission a central University Council committee tasked with evaluating the culture and safety of the main thoroughfare of campus.
Both Greek and non-Greek students united to propose introducing non-fraternity organizations, academic hubs, and cultural resource centers to Locust Walk, believing that integrating these spaces would dismantle the culture of exclusion. It was this exact pivot in 1990 that laid the groundwork for what would come. Because of this movement, the Penn Women’s Center was ultimately able to relocate to a prime location on the walk in 1996.
Within the same month as the Penn Women’s Center officially opening doors at their new location on Locust Walk, the Philadelphia Commission on Human Relations awarded the PWC Director and Associate Director, Ellie DiLapi and Gloria Gay, the 1996 Professional in Human Relations Award.
As noted by their nominator, Dr. Anu Rao of the School of Social Work at Penn, the center’s dedication to assisting survivors of rape, sexual assault, and discrimination is laudable. In an article by the Daily Pennsylvanian covering the award, the Vice Provost of University Life Valarie Swain-Cade McCollum noted that this was the “first time any University office has received an award of this caliber from the Philadelphia commission.”
This recognition of the PWC’s work on a municipal level showed for the first time that a university organization’s mission was impacting more than students within the campus bubble. The PWC was a public service to Penn students and the surrounding West Philadelphia community with its offering of counseling services beyond the University community.
The September 1990 issue of the Almanac captures a historic moment when anti-rape activism on Penn’s campus directly reshaped the federal legislative landscape as we know it today. The issue featured the congressional testimony of Penn undergraduate Erica Strohl, a leader of the campus group STARR (Students Together Against Acquaintance Rape). Strohl traveled to Washington D.C. to testify before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the toll that acquaintance and date rape takes on its victims. Her testimony served as a profound national turning point, helping influence what would become the most comprehensive piece of federal legislation addressing gender-based violence in American history.
The hearing was convened and chaired by then-Senator Joseph Biden, who had introduced the very first draft of the Violence Against Women Act (VAWA) just months earlier in June 1990. Following the introduction of the draft, PWC Director Ellie DiLapi received a phone call from a Senate Judiciary Committee staffing who said, “The senators don’t understand this thing about date rape. Could you help us?” According to DiLapi, Senator Biden’s son, Beau, likely prompted the call because he was Erica’s classmate at Penn.
When Senator Biden opened the floor, he explicitly noted that Strohl’s outreach had forced the Senate committee to shift its focus. While the government’s initial hearings focused heavily on “stranger danger” and alleyway attacks, Strohl and fellow student survivors debunked that stereotype. They helped Congress recognize that acquaintance rape was not only far more prevalent on university campuses, but carried a distinct psychological cruelty because it broke trust.
Four years later, the VAWA was enacted. Before this legislation, universities could systematically suppress rape reports to protect their institutional reputations and enrollment numbers. Strohl’s testimony in 1990 was a building block to passing VAWA, which would expand upon the Clery Act. Universities participating in federal student aid programs were now required to compile and release statistics for incidents of dating violence, domestic violence, sexual assault, and stalking.
The Almanac entry highlights how this national leverage immediately amplified the power of student activism in Philadelphia. Backed by the Senate Judiciary hearings, Strohl and her peers returned to Penn with unyielding momentum.
