By: Lydia Schouten
There are new clubs at Concordia every year, and the new feminism club HERd is a notable addition this year. There has not been a feminism club on campus since 2022, when “Stand With Her” fizzled out after its leaders graduated.
HERd’s Co-President Andrew Traeger says the club is needed because “politically there’s a lot of negatively charged language surrounding women and what they can do with their bodies and how they can express themselves, and creating an organization that holds space for women to just be themselves is very important.”
Surprisingly, HERd is not an acronym. Even though “Concordia loves acronyms,” Buzzeo says, they wanted something that felt more affiliated with their mission. So, “we decided on HERd with a focus on “her,” and then kind of playing off the idea that it would be a group of people creating a safe space” Buzzeo says. Traeger adds, “I like to think there’s two puns with it, a herd of women and heard as in you’re being heard and being listened to.”
The group’s mission statement is “To build a campus community where students, specifically women, are supported, informed, and given space to be confident in themselves.”
It’s “built for women to support women, but open and welcome to anyone and everyone,” says Buzzeo.
While the focus of the group is women, both Buzzeo and Traeger make it clear that HERd is for everybody.
“The patriarchy affects everybody,” says Buzzeo.
The co-presidents were both very pleased to see a large and gender diverse crowd at the first event of the year, the paint and sip night. Buzzeo says “if we want to actually achieve anything, it involves having men there as part of the conversations to learn and grow themselves too.”
Traeger and Buzzeo were inspired to start the club last year after taking COM 403, Strategic Communication, which involved working with Planned Parenthood. Planned Parenthood is a healthcare organization that is the nation’s leading provider and advocate of high-quality, affordable sexual and reproductive health care for anyone who needs it. Buzzeo says “Part of what Planned Parenthood wanted us to do is help coordinate starting clubs that are affiliated with or support the mission of planned parenthood at MSUM, Concordia, and NDSU.”
They took the advice and started HERd. They are already using Planned Parenthood’s resources at their next event, Sex-Ed Bingo on September 28th in ISC 260, will have a representative from Planned Parenthood there to provide sex education and support for students who have questions or want to talk about sex health.
Buzzeo and Traeger have structured this club to host events that surround three different pillars.
Education is the first pillar, like the Sex-Ed Bingo night coming up.
Advocacy is the second, stay tuned for HERd to potentially partner with the “League of Women’s Voters to do a ‘get out the vote’ drive” Traeger says.
The third pillar is creating safe spaces, these events are more about getting together and doing fun activities. For example, the paint and sip night that happened a couple weeks back or an October event where they plan to do a “Hocus Pocus” viewing night and make slime.
With the excitement of starting a new club on their plates, Traeger and Buzzeo also have plans for the future, in fact, Buzzeo says “we’re hoping to get through the year, both being seniors, we want to find people to continue HERd’s work next year and beyond that.”
As they get more established, they are hoping to partner with the Center for Holistic Health and their network of resources and being a place where women can go if they need help or support is “a goal that we strive for,” Traeger says.
