Posted on 05/22/2004 5:43:17 PM PDT by chance33_98
UCSB Offers New Queer Studies Minor
By Jason La - Staff Writer Wednesday May 19, 2004
A new minor in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transsexual and queer studies was recently added to the academic pool at UCSB.
The university officially sanctioned the LGBTQ minor last week, and students can sign up for it immediately. Overseen by the Women's Studies program, the minor's required classes range from women's studies courses to English classes. Erin Pullin, UCSB alumna and assistant to the director of the Resource Center for Gender and Sexual Diversity, was a student organizer who worked to get a LGBTQ minor on the books three years ago. Pullin said she is excited about the new minor.
"It's going to be a really positive thing for students on campus because it will give students in interdisciplinary studies a chance to study this and it will give others the opportunity to study this as a minor," she said.
In its first week of availability, 12 students have signed up for the minor, said Rebecca Chapman, undergraduate advisor for the Women's Studies programs.
"I think it shows that students really want this [minor]," she said.
The Women's Studies 80 course is a prerequisite for entrance into the minor, Chapman said. Following its completion, students would have to meet three levels of requirements. The Level A requirement states that students must enroll in Women's Studies 162, LGBTQ Studies. Level B is a humanities requirement in which students can choose from a range of classes, such as an English course with an emphasis on queer literature. The final Level C requirement deals with sexuality and gender.
People in the Women's Studies program contributed heavily to minor's availability, Pullin said.
"I think it's a really amazing thing for the students who've been involved in getting it," Pullin said. "The Women's Studies [program] has spent a lot of time and did a lot of research to make sure this happened and it was done right."
The push for a LGBTQ minor at UCSB started during student walkouts in 1998, Chapman said.
"It took a long time," Chapman said. "It started out seven years ago with students and the Women's Studies program saying they wanted an LGBTQ minor."
Pullin also enlisted the help of faculty members to aid in the minor's approval.
"We interviewed faculty to gain support and wrote a paper to give to the Women's Studies [program] about the proposal," she said.
Although Chancellor Yang supported the minor, Chapman said, it was faculty and staff members who have kept pushing.
"Yang signed off on it in 1998, but when it came down to it, had certain faculty members and Student Affairs officers not stepped in and take reign of this, we might still be waiting," Chapman said. "It just goes to show that the students can demand it and the chancellor can sign off on it, but it took seven years for it to happen. Students just have to be persistent."
Will this be as useful as the Womyn's Studies degree?
People wonder why many people who has college degrees can't seem to find a job??
How is it that a word that could be called defamatory, "queer", can be part of the title of a state-sponsored UCSB educational program (LBGTQ Studies)?
That would be like havving a UCSB degree program in Goddamned Democrat Studies.
This'll be just dandy.
I worry, though, about all the other employers looking for Queer Studies people stealing them away at much higher salaries.
Students actually pay to have their heads used as a garbage can for extremist left-wing political dogma, then they blame Republicans for being unemployed.
has = have
What are theygoing to do when the GARBAGE MAN comes?
thats the trouble, nobody ever comes to empty it. It just overflows and you end up stepping in it.
As a taxpayer in California, I have to say -- MY MONEY is going to this??? I wonder if Arnold knows. After all, we do have a budget problem....
A degree in this area of study is much more valuable than something frivolous like engineering or accounting.
Your Tax Dollars At Work.
Amen. And it's not just the gay/lesbian/transexual studies departments that are problematic. It's the whole system for teaching humanities and the social sciences that is just plain broken. Professors, who are basically bright, hard-working, committed people, become inculcated into a ridiculous system. They end up sincerely believing that as long as they can publish a lot of papers on some idea no matter how irrelevant and trivial, they are doing the right thing. No one will dispute their published ideas, because no one really even reads them, much less cares. Publishing has become completely non-competitive with a proliferation of journals no one reads. The taxpayers subsidize this, and the students get short-changed.
At UCLA a little more than a decade ago there was a huge protest about the university not having a (full-fledged) Latino/a Studies dept., and a Latino prof and a few of his students went on a hunger strike to set things a-crooked. They stuck with it bigtime (for weeks), withering away to near-death and inspiring a bunch of Latinos to hold a building on campus hostage for a few days. It was a nasty scene. But the university caved in and a new dept was born. For some reason they had to axe another dept. to make room, and the astronomy dept was the one sacrificed (it was integrated into the physics dept).
It was amazing....these people risked death for a new lousy dept.
To get an A you have to hang out at Gay Bars and write a thesis on how many recruits you helped gather and train.
Another meaningless degree. I received my degree in Theater with a major in Directing. Oh, Mr. Papp, here's my diploma! Yea.
Another meaningless degree. I received my degree in Theater with a major in Directing. Oh, Mr. Papp, here's my diploma! Yea.
Here's the good chancellor's e-mail!
Dr. Henry Yang
henry.yang@chancellor.ucsb.edu
And while you are at it, you can ask him what is his planning to do about the lack of political diversity at the faculty level (I guess it is like 97% Dem). UCSB's Young Republican club just staged a sit-in in his office and presented him with the Student Bill of Academic Rights.
If you are an alumni - you might mention how no money will be forthcoming until the situation is rectified.
I guess they will call it a QA degree, or the advanced degree MQA.....
What next, a degree in sexual techniques? Oh, I'm sorry, I'm sure that is already being offered....
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