After a long process, I am prepared to release the paper I wrote to fulfill the senior research requirement of my Gender and Women’s Studies degree at Knox College. I used this opportunity to delve into the formal processes of the Grievance Panel – to get a full and complete story on the panel that has been under such extreme scrutiny on campus for so long.

I believe that what I have put together has great potential to be a resource for improvements on the Grievance Panel, and I am very pleased to be able to present it to the Knox community and beyond.

In the process of putting this paper together, I was firmly committed to using a strict feminist methodology; I wanted my interviewees to have the opportunity to review how I had presented their words before they were made public. By way of the interviews and the inclusion of their experiences, these individuals became an integral part of my research. I didn’t want to just use them to collect data, I wanted to give them every opportunity to participate in the final project to the extent that they felt comfortable. Each person I interviewed was given multiple opportunities to read through this essay and make comments or corrections. This process was time consuming but necessary, and is the main reason for the push-back of this release.

I am endlessly grateful to those individuals who took a chance and allowed me to hear their stories and make them public. Thank you.

Megan Gamble