Now that’s it’s the end of the year there are tons of dinners and get togethers to sum everything up. Many academic departments host end of semester dinners for the student majors and minors. The Women and Gender Studies department is one such academic department, and this dinner was supposed to include a dance party. Well, unfortunately the dance party occured after-hours, with one of my friends using the bottled water and left-over angel food cake as dance props while wiggling to Justin Timberlake but the dinner itself was nice. Seniors received plastic gold “Grad” necklaces and then we each had to stand up and receieve a little plastic contraption that makes noise when shook so that we are all able to find each other during the big senior dinner. However, because of the economy, these clapper left a little to be desired and half of the people at my table had their clapper disintegrate and fall in their food but that’s okay. We can just wave the pastic parts in the air at the senior dinner, it will make no difference.
The dinner itself was good. It was catered by Commons and was upstairs in the new dining hall. It was very low-key, no speeches or forced interactions. We came, we ate, we took the center pieces, some of us danced, basically we conquered.
We have a sizable numer of majors and minors this year, moreso than subsequent years which is exciting. I didn’t get much of a chance to interact with many underclassman but I’m excited for the future of the department. I think it’s finally begun to get noticed and not a second too late I’d say. All over the world gender studies programs are getting cut from university curricula because people believe that gendered perspectives are now present other university disciplines like sociology and anthropology and history and so on. So this means gender studies courses can be elimintated? That’s like saying, oh Obama’s president, we no longer need to discuss race in the classroom. Even if gendered perspectives are included in other courses, there is something to be said for a discipline that focuses solely on issues of power and inequality. It’s frightening in a way that these courses viewed as inconsequential now and are getting erased.
But anyway, the dinner was nice. It was a nice chance to spend time with my fellow classmates and professors and celebrate the end of an intensely stressful semester. It makes me sad to think of everything wrapping up like this. Oh well, after thesis I just can’t think about feminist theory for a while. On purpose at least.
Shhhh,
Steph
