EDITORIAL: Women's Studies after 25 years

As the department reaches the quarter century mark, the celebration is bittersweet. The department has grown from an initial offering of only 12 small seminars to this year's slate of more than 50 lectures and seminars. The courses themselves have gone from loosely defined classes on the study of women to academically rigorous courses crossing disciplines and departments. And the program now attracts some of the best professors at the University. The program provides a diversity of voice and perspective that is often in short supply on this campus. Students across the University, particularly those in the College, cannot achieve a well-rounded education without at some point moving beyond their preconceptions. We urge all students to take a better look at the program's offerings, and to do so with an open mind. Still, serious concerns cloud today's anniversary celebration. Large segments of the student body continue to shun the program, saying privately that they fear the courses feature a radical feminist ideology out of line with their own thinking. As a result, the program remains quite small. Women's Studies administrators proudly point to the 1,600 students who enrolled in the program's courses last year. But those numbers may be misleading -- the figure is the total number of students enrolled in the program's classes over the year and does not take into account the number of students who took more than one Women's Studies course per semester. A far smaller subgroup of people likely accounts for much of that figure. Additionally, many Women's Studies majors continue to complain that other students look down on their chosen course of study, deriding the program as academically questionable. Admittedly, much of this thinking is based on students' own preconceptions about Women's Studies, but the fact that many students continue to feel uncomfortable at the very thought of taking such a class should be a cause of concern for the program's administrators. And given that the Women's Studies program was a student-initiated development, it's a shame so many students fail to take advantage of the program. With any luck, the program's 26th anniversary will be even happier than the 25th.