Skyline has been feeling the loss of one of its core student groups, Women in Transition, which for decades offered support to students, both women and men, whose journeys to community college left them in need of guidance.

Today’s would-be recipients of help from Women in Transition, or WIT, are hidden in plain sight.

Taiana Haungatau walks toward the quad from the building 1 vending machines with her classmate, David Rios. The two of them are old friends, having worked together previously in the same college’s housing department. Haungatau worked there for nine years. Prior to that, she was a Skyline student.

“I had a career,” she said. “Then I came back. There’s really nothing to tell you what you’re supposed to do when you come back. You just kind of wing it.”

It hasn’t always been that way at Skyline. When Haungatau was here 10 years ago, she was part of WIT. The program was founded in the mid 1970’s in order to provide women (and men) with a support system while they worked to adjust to college life, often after a long absence from any school environment.

“WIT helped me get going professionally,” Haungatau said. “It helped me to figure out a career.”

WIT currently finds itself in administrative limbo. Several years ago, Lori Slicton, formerly the program’s coordinator, helped found the Women’s Center out of her office in building 2. The learning community’s emphasis shifted from education, with specially catered classes for like-minded students, to a general support model. Many women and men of all ages attended WIT events and came away with a sense of empowerment on their educational journeys.

Last semester, Slicton stepped down as coordinator for personal reasons. She was unavailable for an interview, but Donna Bestock, the dean of the division that formerly oversaw WIT’s operations, says that WIT is looking to shift emphasis from an academic assistance group to an extension of counseling, akin to the Veteran’s Center.

“Students can do an awful lot when they get together,” Bestock said. “WIT is definitely in the plan going forward.”

Haugatau was disappointed to hear of WIT’s disappearance. Prior to her return, she had been actively referring friends at Skyline to WIT meetings for years.

“I said, ‘Just take WIT, and you’ll see, you can do this,’” she said.

Nevertheless, she is now on track to obtain her associates degree from Skyline, which will help propel her back into her career of choice. And her story is one of hundreds like it over the years. In February, WIT students past and present gathered for a memorial service honoring Pataine Gladstone, a student who joined WIT in her seventies. When she passed away, there were four WIT members waiting with her in the hospital.

“I love her because we became such good friends,” said Shawn-Kayln Edwards, a fellow WIT student and one of the students who rushed to the hospital when Pataine was admitted. “She was all around a really good woman. She lived a hard life.”

Also in attendance at the memorial was Connie Spearing, who received an associate’s degree in anthropology under Slicton in 2008. Spearing transferred her credits to UC Berkeley, where she completed a BA in anthropology. She is proud of having completed this transition well into her sixties.

“I could not have done it without WIT,” she said. “It was such a wonderful thing to have. It saved lives, I’m sure. I really missed it when I left.”