Despite plans to increase the number of majors within the College of Arts and Sciences, the Women's and Gender Studies program is not likely to disappear, according to Gay Young, director of the WGST program.
After students and alumni recently formed a WGST Facebook group, the rumor that the program would be cancelled circulated around campus.
"I see this as an opportunity, rather then a death sentence," Young said, referring to the expansion of majors in CAS. "It can be a basis to ask for resources."
According to Young, WGST at American University is a program, not a department, which means that professors who teach for the program are borrowed from other departments.
"What this all boils down to is relatively limited resources," she said.
The program is comprised of only about five core WGST classes, Young said. To fulfill the rest of their major requirements, WGST students take classes in other departments, including sociology and psychology.
"It's hard to have a clear sense of what is offered," Young said. "But it also makes it a flexible and combinable course of study."
Lucinda Peach, a WGST professor, said she worries the size and relative newness of the program makes it vulnerable.
"It is marginalized within the university," she said. "When there are budget cuts, it is more vulnerable than more established majors."
According to Peach, increasing the number of majors in CAS could deprive the program of funding. However, students and faculty are too committed to the program for it to disappear, she said.
The program will persist, "only because of the efforts of feminist-friendly faculty and students to keep the program," Peach said.
Young said she believed the program still has an important place at AU.
"There's not yet a complete inclusion of women," she said. "Even on a campus with a majority of females, there's still marginalization of women in the classroom and in student government."
Peach agreed. "Without WGST, it is much easier to overlook the contributions of women," she said.
Students majoring in WGST also expressed the importance of the program.
"I can apply what I learn," Kim Feldman, a senior in CAS, said. "Anything I do will involve WGST."
Justin Moschetti, also a senior in CAS, agreed that WGST is an important educational study. "WGST is new and largely ignored," she said. "There's a lot of area for exploration."
According to Young, the goal of the program is now to decide what public face it wants to project.
"We will be making a mission statement," she said. "We'll also be answering the perennial question of, 'What can you do with a WGST major?'"
By providing a "skeptical eye on social reality," Young said that the program will continue to have a place intellectually.
"The university is not complete without the inclusion of the ideas and perspectives of traditionally marginalized groups," she said.
