Recruitment booths appear sporadically around campus, and there are always students in the Reserve Officer Training Corps, but by and large, the U.S. military does not play a direct role in many students' lives on campus.
But at the Center for the Arts on Friday, the first gender week event focused on just that, as language and role of the military in women's lives took center stage at a conference on the armed forces and gender.
Keynote speaker Dr. Cynthia Enloe, renowned author and political science professor at Clark University, focused her lecture on militarization and how it affects women's rights. She said she feels that women's empowerment has become a tool used by the government to further their aims of militarization.
"The United States is more militarized than it has ever been before," she said. "The language that is used, first it was the war on poverty, then the war on drugs, now the war on terror. More aspects of life serve military ends than ever before."
Enloe said the danger of militarizing women's empowerment is that it reduces the effectiveness of empowerment.
"Women's lives are not valued for themselves. Militarization means that you only have to take women seriously in regards to what matters, that is, national security. It is enormously dangerous," she said.
Citing numerous examples, Enloe discussed some of the gains in women's rights from arguing for them to increase national security. She acknowledges some of the strides that have been made, such as the military taking actions to prevent sexual harassment and domestic abuse within itself, but stresses the trade-off.
"It's dangerous to tie women's rights to any other goal besides women's rights," Enloe said.
Members of the military were also present at the conference, which attracted the attention of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy.
"I'm not sure what to expect," said First Class Cadet Dianna Garfield, one of four coast guard cadets in attendance. "This isn't a topic that is discussed at the academy."
Her classmate, First Class Cadet Karen Love, also said she looked forward to getting different insights.
"I want to know what a professor, an outsider, thinks," Love said. "Not what I think, or what my roommates think."
Afterwards, the cadets said the speaker left them with a lot to consider.
"It sparked a lot of interest and got me thinking," Love said.
Garfield said she agreed the discussion provided a lot of food for thought.
"It's a lot to digest in one night," Garfield said.
"Things have changed a lot," said their Lieutenant, Jamie Gatz. "(Women lobbyists) are working with older men who have a different mindset. When I came through the academy the women were like our sisters. They were protected."
Nannette Bateau, a veteran of the Navy who enlisted in 1975, said she was at the conference to seek closure. She said her years in the Navy as a mechanic were tumultuous and that she experienced sexual harassment and verbal abuse for being a woman.
"I had a shore position and men would tell me I was 'taking up a man's place,' and they would have to go to sea because of that," Bateau said.
Her friend Rose Cooper experienced very similar treatment after she enlisted in the Navy in 1981.
"I'm seeking validation, I want to hear that yes, it did happen," Cooper said.
Both women said despite their experiences, they loved the Navy.
"I liked it, I wanted to make the Navy my career," Cooper said.
Enloe said she didn't begin to study military culture or women until the 1980s, as she began to study how ethnicities played out in the military.
"My students, at Clark, asked me 'Where are the women?' And I said, I don't know," Enloe said.
Her students' question led her on the quest that would eventually culminate in her book, "Does Khaki Become You? The Militarization of Women's Lives," the book that in turn helped spawn this conference.
