Happy International Women’s Day!

By Genevieve Buthod

I hope you’re all having a great Women’s History Month so far. There are plenty of great activities lined on and off campus, so you should check out the bulletin boards and see if any of them interest you. I think there’s even a roller girl tournament soon, which is a really fun way to celebrate this month. I ended up having a long conversation with my friends today, trying to convince them of the correlation between pornography and human trafficking. My friends are all guys so it took some work to completely explain why the commoditization of sex is a bad thing, but it was well worth the effort.

In my jazz history class last night, my teacher surprised us by calling all of his friends and having them come out and play for us during class. It was so cool! They played I’ll Remember April (up, in a Latin style with an awesome session of trading fours), Autumn in New York, one of my favorites (played real slow and sweet, just how it should be), and then Billie’s Bounce, which is a great one to check out if you’ve never heard it.

In honor of today, I asked them if they believed there was any room for women on the jazz scene in Chicago. None of them had an explanation for the near-absence of female players, but they all seemed to firmly believe that the atmosphere was open and inviting. I don’t really know what to think about that, but I guess I’ll really find out after graduation, right?

They share my love for Esperanza Spalding, though, so that rocks. I admire her so much. She was the first person to teach me how to create a great riff and lead my section with it. She even told me I have chops! I will absolutely never forget that. She’s an incredibly talented singer/bass player, and she’s only 26. I think it was wonderful that we spent time in class talking about her, on today of all days. In fact, to me, talking about the importance of women in music is one of the best ways we could have celebrated today.

Genevieve Buthod is a freshman from St. Louis, MO. She is computer science major and a women's studies minor. Buthod is a vegan and part of the Gay Straight Alliance (GSA) at Saint Xavier.