AACC’s Communications Department hosted a Women’s History Month event on March 31 at which students read poems and speeches by notable women throughout history and today.

Communications professor April Copes, who organized the annual Soapbox Sisters event, said the performance is a chance for those at AACC to read works from prominent women.

“Students and staff and faculty present contemporary and historically significant speeches and poems to celebrate diverse women’s voices,” Copes said.

The event, which the college held in person before the pandemic, was on Zoom for the first time this year.

First-year transfer studies student Sydney Klabnik, who emceed the function, said she felt “really great about the event” despite its being online.

“It was a wonderful way to cap off Women’s History Month,” Klabnik added. “[I] was really excited to see professors and students and community members come together to celebrate,”

Copes agreed.

“It’s important to provide an opportunity for students, you know, and faculty and staff on campus to come together outside of their regular classroom experiences, to hear from people,” she said.

During the event, students, faculty and staff performed readings of speeches and poems such as Amanda Gorman’s “The Hill We Climb” and Wendy Cope’s “Differences of Opinion.”

Gorman, the youth poet laureate, recited her poem at President Joe Biden’s January 2021 inauguration. Cope’s poem follows a conversation that a woman has with a man who is asserting that the earth is flat, and despite his being wrong, his confidence causes him to discount her.

First-year astronomy and physics student Zoe Brunton performed Cope’s poem and said, “As … a woman in the sciences, this was very much something that was … close to my heart.”