During my experience on Wednesday with archival research, I found that I was most interested in documents related to student ideals and beliefs. Therefore, it was my goal to find a document which directly addressed the beliefs of Santa Clara students at the time in which it was created. After investigation of a variety of documents and artifacts, I have chosen to focus on an article from Santa Clara University’s own student run newspaper, “The Santa Clara.” The article, which is essentially a summary of a lecture given by a guest speaker, is entitled “Austrian Count Talks on Love, Sex, Marriage, Death.” Written by John Rallo, this article was published on Wednesday, December 6, 1961.
I chose this article because it expresses some highly controversial and generally sexist ideas regarding sex and gender. For example, the speaker claims that “sex is always selfish,” that “woman was, is, and will be subordinate to men,” and that women “will attempt by nagging to shape their mate.” I find it fascinating that a speaker who would be considered so highly inappropriate today was revered as “[vastly knowledgeable and experienced]” only fifty five years ago.
Similarly, I have included an a cartoon below which illustrates the relevance of gender inequality issues today.
As in the article which I found in the archive, the male speaker in this cartoon is seemingly unaware of his sexist remarks. In this way, the cartoon is a representation of contemporary sexism and gender inequality. I want to point out, that although my research is on an article from 1961, gender inequality is still an important issue today, especially in the workplace where women typically receive lesser pay than men.
mattsrobinson 
Matt,
I find it really interesting that you changed your overall research topic after going into the archives and finding a more interesting topic. I believe that there were more than a few people who did as you did, so nice work on not being afraid to change things up. I also found the student newspaper to be a super informative source that is perfect for informing archive researchers on social norms during a certain time period because the paper is always obviously written in the present time about present issues that are presently affecting people. Gender is an issue that looking back, many people are disgusted with how we treated women although it still is an issue currently affecting our society today. I wrote my research paper on a similar gender topic so it is interesting to see your view and how you attained your archival documents.
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