Questions for the Women’s Studies Department
A recent report on the Women’s Studies Departments in North Carolina state universities by Melana Zyla Vickers asks the question: Do students want Women Studies? When reading over Vickers’ report and contemplating this question, I couldn’t help but ask myself an equally important question: Do Women’s Studies want students? I think perhaps the department would rather have protégées to train so that one day they might teach in the Women’s Studies Department and thus keep their room in the ivory tower. Otherwise, what good is the Women’s Studies program? What are they preparing students for?
Now, I have never taken a Women Studies’ course at UNC-Chapel Hill; I’ve been too busy filling the requirements for an education major to spend time learning about “Compulsory Heterosexuality and Lesbian Existence” (to note just one course), but I have had several friends who have taken Women’s Studies courses — and have all regretted it. I hope to take a course next year, just for the sake of having done it, but until then, I’m currently occupied fighting feminists and liberals outside of the classroom, let alone take them on in a “comfortable learning zone.”