CSUN Feminists Make Course Strides

After working summers at an aerospace firm, Cheryl Jeanjaquet, a senior biology major at California State University, Northridge, said she wonders what faculty feminists are “fussing about. I see women doing the same jobs as men, and I don’t see any problems.”

In the opinion of senior drama major Tami Wiegand, campus feminists “spend too much time complaining, and I get tired of hearing it.”

Citing a failed attempt last fall to prohibit the sale of Playboy and Penthouse magazines on campus, Wiegand said women studies teachers at Northridge have “run out of valid issues, so they continue fighting battles that don’t matter, or ones they already won.”

It’s not for lack of trying that Northridge feminists have failed to convince female students such as Jeanjaquet and Wiegand that, as feminists see it, the struggle for women’s rights is far from over.

“Much of the campus feels women have gained everything they need,” said Mary McEdwards, a Northridge speech communication professor who was one of the founders of the university’s women’s program. “We spend a lot of our time showing young women that sexism is still there and that the gains of the past could be lost unless there is vigilance.”

A recent university decision is aiding in the feminists’ drive to convert the skeptical.

Last September, the basic women studies course--which combines a study of women’s history and current economic problems with old-fashioned consciousness-raising--was designated as a course students could take to fulfill one of the university’s requirements for graduation.

The designation quadrupled the number of students taking Women Studies 200, from about 200 last year to 800 this school year. As in the past, about 90% of the students in class are women, according to Elizabeth B. Berry, an associate vice president for academic affairs and a co-founder of the women’s program.

Berry said that if the trend continues, within four or five years as many as a fifth of all graduates will have taken the course.

“And the beauty of this course is that 99.9% of the students leave the class changed in some way,” she said. “So we expect our influence and our impact to grow over the years.”

Designation as an elective also brought into the classes women and men with no prior interest in women’s rights, “those who just needed to fulfill a requirement and needed a class at Tuesday and Thursday at 9 a.m.,” Berry said.

“It’s tougher to convince these uncommitted students, especially since a raised consciousness can bring tumult to one’s life,” she said. “But these are the students we’ve been hoping to reach.”

Frustration at the lack of new converts should not suggest that campus feminists are without support or clout, however.

In the seven years since the university joined what was then a nationwide rush to establish women’s studies programs, teachers of feminist courses at Northridge have become a highly visible and politically formidable force.

Feminists conduct a continual series of on-campus workshops and panel discussions on women’s issues. The Women’s Center at Northridge offers classes on self-defense and consciousness-raising, plus information on child care and women’s medical and legal problems.

A section of the school library has been set aside for feminist-related books and periodicals.

Of the dozen faculty members who have taught women’s studies courses in recent years, six have also been members of the faculty senate, whose members comprise only about 3% of the 1,500 faculty members on campus.

The current faculty senate president and the previous president--whose collective terms go back five years--have been women studies teachers.

In addition to Berry, who wields considerable influence because of her associate vice president post, women studies teachers include Loralee MacPike, acting dean of humanities, and Patrick Nichelson, chairman of the religious studies department, the only man who has taught a women’s studies course at Northridge.

The membership lists of the 13 permanent faculty committees, each of which is influential in a different area of university life, are studded with the names of women studies instructors.

‘Active Bunch’

McEdwards said she is unsure whether feminists moved into campus politics “because we were feminists and needed clout, or whether we got into women studies because we were already naturally assertive, involved people. But in any case, we’re an active bunch.”

However, feminist clout was insufficient to carry the issue in October when the women studies faculty petitioned student and faculty trustees of the campus bookstore to remove sexually oriented magazines on grounds they degrade women and encourage violence against them.

Feminists initially were successful, gaining a favorable vote from the student government association, narrowly losing in the faculty senate, and then, on Nov. 28, securing a 5 to 4 vote by trustees ordering the bookstore staff to remove the magazines.

Nationwide Attention

But the ban, which attracted nationwide media attention, was unanimously repealed within a month after a massive showing of opposition from students and faculty members who said the trustees’ directive to the staff was unworkable and violated constitutionally protected free speech.

Battered by the rebuff, women studies instructors said they have no plans to revive the issue.

Throughout the two-month debate over the magazine sales, faculty members and student leaders who disagreed with the women studies teachers almost invariably saluted their efforts on behalf of women’s rights before denouncing their position.

But Berry said she thinks the issue gave some anti-feminists on campus a chance to “slam us without appearing to be anti-feminist. Of course, they’ll never admit we were their real target.”

Male Opinion

A male engineering faculty member, who would speak only on the condition that his name would not be used, agreed with Berry’s assessment. He said that many faculty members have become “irked over the years at the women studies presumption that their cause is more sacred than apple pie. When you do that, you don’t want to make yourself into a target they way they did.”

While they ran into overwhelming opposition in the magazine dispute, the Northridge women studies program has escaped any attacks from off-campus groups that several years ago forced radical changes in the women’s studies program at California State University, Long Beach.

Right-wing Christians from Long Beach and Orange County in 1982 persuaded the university to fire three women’s studies teachers and purge the curriculum of materials they contended promoted lesbianism and destroyed traditional family values.

“It’s a conservative area around here, too” Berry said, “but we’ve never heard a peep of protest from such groups as those at Long Beach.”

National Parallel

The establishment and expansion of the women studies program at Northridge paralleled the growth of women’s studies nationwide in the late 1970s.

A recent issue of Women’s Studies Quarterly said there are women’s studies programs or departments at 450 colleges and universities in the nation, up from fewer than 25 in 1970.

The vast majority of them are programs similar to the one at Northridge, rather than full departments.

As at Northridge, a basic women’s studies course is generally viewed as the most important offering, since it reaches the largest audience.

In their introductory course, Northridge instructors reteach world and American history, replacing what Berry calls an emphasis on “wars and kings, wars and kings” with emphasis on the changing status of women over the years and the role women played in key historical events.

Boston Tea Party Role

McEdwards, for example, said women--not men, as is commonly assumed--were instrumental in the revolt against British taxation led to the Boston Tea Party.

Reading materials for the course include articles from books, magazines and newspapers on subjects such as male dominance in conversations, comparable pay for comparable work, lesbian motherhood and a feminist-run sperm bank.

McEdwards said some students taking the course appear to treat it like any other class, mastering the material to get a passing grade but not letting any of it affect their view of society.

Changes in Life Style

A few, she said, react dramatically to the course, some of them breaking with their boyfriends or having confrontations with their fathers as a result of what they learn in class. Occasionally, she hears of a student who moves away from home as a result of conflicts that can be traced to the class, McEdwards said.

“I don’t feel I break up these relationships,” she said. “The information does. I just pass it along.”

Laura Bigelow, a sophomore art major, said she reacted favorably to the course, complaining only that “everything was presented in such a dispassionate manner.”

Bigelow, a longtime women’s rights partisan, said she was frustrated that her classmates “seemed to worry too much that men wouldn’t like them if they became feminists and not enough about injustices in the world, like the fact that women are underpaid in relation to men and that women are in danger of losing control of their bodies if abortion is taken away.”

Others, like Dawn Kramer, a junior majoring in physical therapy who took the course last fall, said she found the feminist view of society unexpectedly interesting, but concluded in the end that she “didn’t personally go for it. I just didn’t see many things that still need changing.”

McEdwards said Northridge feminists have no immediate plans to work on altering textbooks and reading materials in other departments to better represent their point of view.

“We’re not in a position to do it,” she said, “and those changes will occur naturally as women climb to positions where they write and select textbooks.”