Elizabeth Chin (Professor of Critical Theory and Social Justice)

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I was happy to see the Weekly‘s reporting on the status of WSGS at Oxy but would like to address some points included in the recent article about WSGS at Occidental. A few corrections are also called for.

First, the difference between a major and a department is incredibly important. WSGS has long been a major at Occidental, but it has never been a department. A major is a course of study. A department is an institutional entity that has the following extremely important resources: 1) access to an administrative assistant; 2) dedicated office space, phone lines and office equipment; 3) a department-sized budget; 4) representation (or the potential thereof) on college committees; 4) at least one full-time faculty member. WSGS has never had even one of these four departmental resources. In particular, the college has never had a full time person in WSGS. The closest we came to a full-time WSGS faculty member was Mary Weismantel, who taught here 1983-1997 and was hired to teach half-time in Women’s Studies.

Second, Pomona, like Occidental, does not have a Women’s Studies department. They have a Women’s Studies program that, while full of interesting and active faculty, faces many of the same organizational and institutional headaches that WSGS suffers here at Oxy. A number of years ago I was a finalist for the only Women’s Studies position at Pomona. By the end of the interview process I had decided I wouldn’t take the job even if offered it primarily because everybody seemed to want a piece of the pie. During my interviews I was asked whether, in addition to Women’s Studies, I could teach community involvement, theater, anthropology, African American studies and Asian American studies. I didn’t get the job. More importantly, the woman who DID get the job left after only one year and the position was then eliminated. Scripps College recently attempted to hire a senior scholar to chair Women’s Studies there, that is, to be in charge of a Women’s Studies program structured exactly like ours. Despite offering an endowed chair, a fat salary, and a low teaching load, Scripps couldn’t find anyone who would take the job.

What we see at Oxy, Pomona and Scripps is that the model we are working with doesn’t work. It doesn’t work for students and it doesn’t work for faculty. The WSGS curriculum committee has voted unanimously more than once for WSGS to be housed in CTSJ. The college-wide planning committee supports this plan.

While I speak for myself, I know I am not alone among WSGS curriculum committee members—not alone in my frustration, and not alone in having decided to stop banging my head against the wall. My decision to end my association with the program has spurred a demonstrated and unmistakable lack of institutional commitment in the program’s health. There is no doubt that Oxy does support Women’s Studies in the ideal. Ideals, however, don’t teach students, grade their papers, or design curricula.

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