Dirty Word

Rightly miffed by the sexism of a few fellow male students, 200 Seattle Pacific University students—both women and men—held a campus rally on Friday afternoon, April 28, to protest a boorish website—modeled after the March Madness NCAA basketball brackets—that pitted 64 females from the local Christian university against one another—for "hottest student." (Campus controversy about the site made headlines in the P-I and the Seattle Times that morning.) One speaker at that afternoon's rally, Kristen Eddings, a student and member of the Miss America Organization, declared herself a feminist, defining it this way: "Women have the power to be strong, to be intelligent, to be stimulating... Feminism is making sure women have a voice." Rally organizer, Kristina DeMain, expressed her pleasure with the turnout, but when asked if she considered herself a feminist too, DeMain, mortified by the idea, said: "On this campus feminism is considered a four-letter word." NANCY DREW