Women’s studies has surged over the years

Though women dominate college enrollment statistics, former Boston University President John Silber once deemed women’s studies to be “a fad.”

This tid-bit was one of the many points reviewed during a four-hour conference hosted by College of Arts and Sciences women’s studies professor Carrie Preston and the students of her Feminist Theories and Movements course as part of the two-week-long Gender Fest event series.

Preston’s inspiration for the series was the question of whether “theory promotes activism.” She began last night’s discussion by describing the process she went through to research BU’s first woman professor, Genevieve Stebbins.

“BU gives us two statistics: that from the opening [in 1839], BU was co-ed, and that it opened all of its divisions to female students in 1872,” she said.

Women’s studies professor Deborah Swedberg continued the discussion with the recent history of the department. Women’s studies did not appear in the undergraduate class directory until the 1978-79 school year, when it was listed as a minor with only two classes available.

“When I came here in 1984, the women’s studies program was in shambles,” Swedberg said. “There were hundreds of students waitlisted.”

College of Communication junior Mark Jenssen and graduate student Varun Mehta then discussed the role of gender in the 2008 presidential election.

Jenssen showed a Powerpoint presentation highlighting what she deemed as Sen. Hillary Clinton’s unfavorable portrayal by the media, which has shown her from unflattering angles and close-ups, while Sen. Barack Obama is photographed as stoic, and with an angelic glow.

“I didn’t have to look hard to find this disparity,” Jenssen said.

Ending the night was a discussion on campus safety in light of three recent reported robberies in which women were the victims near campus. Women have had a statistically higher percentage of being targeted because of their small size, said BU Police Department rape aggression defense instructor Peter Shin. He said 90 percent of sexual assaults occur against women, though he recognizes that types of crimes do sometimes occur against men.

Shin encouraged victims of sexual assault crimes to come forward. Although these types of crimes are consistently difficult to prosecute, BUPD Sgt. Jack St. Hilaire said that “all charges of sexual assault are investigated fully and turned over to the Suffolk County Police Department.”

However, when it comes to robberies, “the danger is equal for men and women.”

CAS junior Emily Calvin said she thinks the women’s studies department has made good progress, but the field is still very misunderstood.

“People think women’s studies is about angry, gay feminists,” she said. “It’s in need of a much better presence on campus.”