Okay, this is an interview with Francine Frank.
It's March.
No, it's not.
It's April 3rd, 1997.
And we're going to talk a little bit about the history of the women's studies department
at Sumi Albany.
You were there at the beginning.
I was at the beginning.
It's kind of a little bit peripherally as a bystander.
So it wasn't actively involved.
But I knew about it in the kind of fuzzy administrative way.
I don't know what I was at.
A sort of a coordinator of something or other, who knows what.
Into just one of our programs, I think.
So I knew that the real early days, and I also knew about the discussion of where it should be housed.
Because at the time we had a college of art for sciences, and we had teams of division.
And in general, feeling that even though there's a lot of social science,
that it should be housed in humanities because there's a lot of humanities in the women's.
It was much more sympathetic to what some of it is.
So that's how it actually ended up in the humanities.
And I think that was before, even before John became a director.
The real early days.
Right.
I knew that I knew that people involved.
I was supportive of it.
And I knew about the early days of the teaching collective.
But I was kind of my part of it at that time.
I just remember when I got on to, when I got involved in terms of doing all the advisory committee.
When do you recall when you started teaching or cross-listing courses with us?
Or maybe I don't need, I'm not talking specific dates, but maybe what courses are.
Well, my own involvement came first, one, Jones, who's teaching perspective on women,
and asked me to come and go to get lecture, and talk about language.
I don't know.
I don't know.
Yeah, I should be sure.
That's a bad start.
I'm just a bit of a failure early on.
I was in the 70s.
And I think, maybe, I don't know.
I don't know.
And that's actually what made me get interested in doing my own work on my internship.
Because that's what I thought.
And I guess one of the reasons that I said I was involved in my studies,
is I was very active in the caucus.
I wanted to write to them, share it, and I co-chaired it, and co-chaired it, so they were hard ones.
And even though it was not women's studies, obviously the people were concerned and they were,
you know, something like that, subcommittee that was supportive of women's reasons to discipline.
And so I don't know what it was to bad, you know, in 2006, I didn't have anything to do with gender.
And so, when I said some people can actually convoying their own research and then, you know, teaching in it.
And then when I thought thinking about what I was going to talk about,
I discovered that people had, but lots of things that I had never thought about.
You know, I got quite excited about it.
And that's basically what set me going, and what made me think about it often, of course, and my life.
Which I offered first, believe it was, and this is the case.
I think it was the fall 1976.
I mean, it's pretty much the same thing.
It might have been the fall 1975.
And the reason I remember that is because I was going to give this course,
and then, from our institute, a whole different society in America.
And so, I was going to try it out, test it out, and I'll bring it here.
So I know that that was the first time I've had it.
Let me turn this off for a minute.
Okay, that'll probably hang.
Come on.
Let's see.
It's better because we're closer to each other.
Any better now.
So, and that course, the first time I offered that course, I think it was cross-listed with me in the studies.
I have given it several times since then.
But most recently, actually, in the last few years, and it's always been cross-listed.
Yeah.
Not so much studies.
When I was, I know that I was on the advisory committee before I became dean.
Because when I became dean, I thought it's probably smart not to be on the advisory committee.
And it was, and it was, was dean that it became a department.
Right.
I got a spam, he was a director, and she wrote a memo one day and said,
we should be in department.
We have this, and we have that, and we have the other thing.
And I said, she's right.
So, I wrote a memo because, coming into department is an administrative decision that the president makes.
And everybody said, okay.
And that's how we gave it to the prime of all of us.
Really interesting.
That it seemed so easy.
It was, yeah, it was a good time because I think a few interviews about our programs will be coming to departments.
Right.
Well, as opposed to what we're going through now, trying to get a master's program.
Well, I think it should take so long.
Yeah, it's a long process, but I think what happened is it really just fell between the crack somewhere.
Somebody who has somebody else had it.
Right.
So it happened actually with the, the bachelor's degree proposal.
Because, because all of these programs, we've introduced one of our programs.
I want to study, started out as the, some kind of, we have this umbrella,
into just one of the major, or the concentration in women's studies.
And the proposal to make it a regular major, got stuck in somebody's desk, draw off.
I mean, I don't think it was with Malice or anything.
It was somebody who lapsed in funny situations.
And only after lots of questioning and poking along,
did they discover it, and once they sent it on its way, it was fine.
But it's always a fairly long process because it's got to get both governance and has to go to the state.
I'm glad that, you know, it's got rediscovered so that it's doing.
Right.
You have a master.
Mm-hmm.
And pay the way hopefully for a doctor at Sunday.
You know, that would be very nice.
I think that the program is, you know, is really strong in terms of,
of faculty, the better in it, that, that I don't see any reason why.
You know, they shouldn't have a job.
So we've got the student interest for continue a few years.
Right.
And there's willing to come up part of the administration to continue to support and study properly,
and keep them retired.
You'll never notice.
You'll never know what's going to happen.
Right.
One person changes and the one thing can change.
But I think it's well enough to establish.
It may not, any growth might be slowed down, but I don't think it's going to go away.
Well, I think I'll keep a man for that.
Mm-hmm.
Two.
Did you ever teach any of the core courses?
No, I never did.
I, because you know, I had that long free when I was doing much in the way of teaching.
So within that time, there might have been a time when I might have thought perspectives.
The collective was a bunch of jobs.
But I wasn't, I taught occasionally, and I was then into departments also,
and this is any scholarship that I'm so much teaching with.
You've dealt with?
Mm-hmm.
So basically, it's interesting, because the only actual teaching that I've done in one of the studies
has been this language and gender course.
Right.
Lecture.
But one of the things that, you know, that in the program, and then department gave me the impetus to do that,
is while I was dean, I was fairly active in talking with national groups of deans and administrators
about what the study is, about curriculum fusion or curriculum transformation.
And because I learned all of that from my colleagues in the study here.
So three women deans once gave a panel on curriculum transformation at the meeting of the
Council of Colleges of Arts and Sciences, which is basically a dean's organization.
And it was very well received, but I was also quite shocked to find out how many deans really knew nothing about the study.
Yeah.
The time when it was that, I didn't use the bell with me.
So it was a useful thing to do.
And everybody said how well coordinated and useful this was, because at those meetings when they had panels with several people,
they often didn't discuss ahead of time what they were going to do.
And we had it all nicely, you know, conscientious, really.
Right?
Yeah.
We're all there.
Yeah.
And of course, and I use our program as an example.
And also, there was a lot of talk at the time about whether you need to, how you go back,
making sure you get some kind of critical mass of faculty in women's studies.
And we had only a couple of people at that time.
And really, we only had the only line, I think, with Bonnie.
But it's strange thing happened because of all that time when we were going out,
doing outreach to other departments, getting courses cross listed.
And even though we weren't getting any lines specifically for a little study,
departments were suddenly beginning to hire people who did women's studies.
And it was, well, that's a lot of our associates and even joined faculty came that way.
They weren't people who were here before who they got interested.
And then, of course, at the beginning between John Schultz and Bonnie Spania,
we had this kind of strange procedure where we would get a person to be directive,
who would also have a joint appointment and some other department,
and then go into that department afterwards.
And so that's how I was, I was for that.
I could suppose.
And then the top appointment.
And then the top of women came.
Well, actually, we had one person on the top of women.
And Linda was hired when we got some money to hire a diversity.
Somebody, and it wasn't particularly any particular department, it was a college.
And that was between social sciences and humanities and finance.
And we had a search committee and we actually hired two people.
One was Linda, the one with somebody who was a woman of social origin.
But we had people from all different disciplines coming in.
Were that so in some ways that we just loved that change?
Well, wasn't it a top appointment too?
I guess, yeah, I guess, it was a top appointment.
But that basically, that was an appointment that came through Latin American Caribbean studies
and then came along.
And it was a joint appointment.
But it wasn't one that we went out and recruited for.
That a couple of other possibilities.
But for one reason or another, it didn't come true.
But one way or another, the thing has built up.
And then we got an okay to hire a new person as chair.
So, we got to giving in and now it's in hard drive.
And then when I went back to the faculty and told out the linguistics department,
I said, I'll have my line in room studies.
And it's all in room studies, that's right.
What are, do you remember some of the issues that sort of were dealt with in the years?
Are there any that stand out in your mind?
Internal issues?
Well, either one.
Internal or external, but relating to the new study program slash departments.
Well, I think that there was a long time when there was a feeling that bonus studies was besieged.
People didn't think of it as something legitimate.
So, whether there was so much resentment on the part of other departments,
but there was a kind of, let's not do away with it, but let's not let it grow.
And so, I added it on the part of the administration.
And I think that that was pretty prevalent for a while.
And it was at least with one president.
And he said, how does this program grow so fast?
You know, let's just keep it down.
So, the thing that I could have to be kept under control, it was going to take over a little bit.
So, that was obviously a constant concern about how to grow.
How to grow and how not to be squash, because it depended on the administration.
So, every little bit was a struggle like getting secretary,
was it first the part secretary shared with other programs,
and then I don't remember how it actually never came back.
That you can fold on secretary.
I don't think we had a fold on secretary until we moved into the classroom.
I think that's true, because I think even when the net was there, it was half time.
And even that, it was an advance of what happened before when it was like three or four programs that were sharing on secretary.
So, that was an issue that people were always wondering about.
And now, I don't think it was especially when we studied.
But I remember we had a group of women who went each year to the president to support.
I think it was at that women's issue in general, but it always included women's studies.
I mean, it was a custom like I set up, whether the president liked it or not, they got this report.
And I don't know what that's still happening.
I don't know. I was involved in that.
Yeah. It started with a leery.
It started with a leery.
Who was the one who had said the one it grew?
And it was a group made up of people from the women's concern committee and the council of women's groups and women's studies and the secretary of clerical.
So it was the whole group of women's groups.
It was really representative of all the women's groups on campus, including women's studies.
And I remember that this is...
I'm interviewing you.
I could do.
Well, not that's good, because you were in the wrong...
If it's always carefully orchestrated.
Yes, it was very well planned.
And people just make an appointment and go in and talk off the top of the head.
It was like, hey, it was close.
About this.
That's right.
That, yeah.
I think they were useful.
I don't know whether they're still going on.
Because I've gotten involved in my group.
Well, you know, things move on to a different level.
I mean, we had this organization, the caucus on women's rights, which is very active for both at our level and statewide.
And that really doesn't exist anymore.
And partly, it was not that all the women's issues had been solved.
But certain ones had been solved.
And people moved on because it was the same people.
And they got tired of doing that.
And so they decided a lot of them began to put more efforts into one study.
And I was left side.
But that group was very instrumental in the firm of action and policy.
Having a firm of action offices and had played a big role in it.
And the net-applicant, you know, because they had never had a month of book.
So, as I said, in pushing women's studies.
But, you know, I'm certain of time, I'm certain of long things.
And I think this article that I just gave you a copy of, which talks in detail about the early days and how to see, I think it was written in 74.
So it really had began.
The first course is what the setup was for interdisciplinary programs.
It certainly doesn't even say anything about a department.
And I was trying to say, why did Joan and I write this as a outcome?
It was two of us. Well, Joan obviously had been director of it.
And I don't know whether it was because I had been, for a short time, coordinator of interdisciplinary studies.
Or whether it was the time that the two of us were co-chairs of this caucus.
Neither of us remember writing this thing.
Not that it's a great piece of writing, it isn't.
But it's interesting because we've got a lot of information in it.
Apparently, the feminist press is going to do an issue celebrating 30 years of learning today.
It's all so wonderful.
And they want to include in a very article from the past, plus special things about the future.
And among them are several essays on women's studies in different stages that have been published in the past.
And it probably was a report for a feminist study, one of the studies poorly, whatever it's written.
It's something that's cold at the time.
And so I guess we were not the earliest program, but we were one of the early programs.
You arrived at the time, which I've gone in different directions.
I know that the collective, I think, was based in part on a model developed in Buffalo.
The idea, I remember the Buffalo was always in trouble.
They were always calling for help.
They still are.
I said, this is like, they are again.
Because they had a very strong, they had this woman's studies college for a while.
They had these kind of semi-residential colleges.
And instead of being a department, that's what they were relegated to.
And they had a very strong community involvement.
It was in the late 60s or 70s, where they had community people involved with BOTUS,
rather untraditional academic kind of a setup.
And that was part of what got them in trouble.
And finally, both of them went part of some of their problems.
I'm not sure about the undergraduate, but the graduate went into America.
But they were always sending out SOS signals.
So it was involved, because I knew the people that were involved.
I remember the early stories about setting up the collective.
And what a big job that was actually setting up, basically, Jewish, Italian, Jews.
That's the day, you know, how it got started.
Got an award.
I think it was at the end of the year.
It got an award for innovative teaching of programming.
They will probably remember what the name of the award was.
It was done long.
But it was cited, certainly, for a month.
I'll ask about it.
Because Joan didn't even mention that.
She didn't mention that.
No, she probably didn't.
And I think it was in the USA.
It was at some big, big group.
That's a special citation.
I don't know how it worked.
I would hand it to them, but it was mentioned.
And it's a program that has been fairly salient in that people know better than when they talk about the development of women studies.
And all of these often mention, you know, it was early enough, like, different, you know.
She noticed.
Yeah.
What about the people?
Can you talk about the people who were involved?
Both the people who are still here.
But some of the ones maybe who came and went, thank you, Joan.
We won't tell you how much I owe you stuff.
Let's go away.
I'm just going to go to the table right now.
Yeah, I'm not the people that I think are.
I think a lot of the people that I still hear or else they just retired, like Joan.
What about students?
Well, see, I didn't know the students.
I mean, if I wasn't actually teaching them.
So, you know, when I look at a list of students occasionally, I'll remember them because I knew them in some other setting.
I saw a handful of that.
For some of the women studies graduates, I've written letters and recommendations.
But relatively few.
We've had, you know, in a few that I did know, we've been to wonderful students who've done some really interesting things and gone on to interesting careers.
It's very nice.
But it would be nice, actually, if we could have a more systematic way of maintaining contact.
It would be a lot of them have interesting things to say.
And would welcome a contact.
But not too many people initiate it.
Yeah, to kind of coach you.
I think that will probably happen, but it's a big job.
That's actually fundraising.
Well, I think I would have liked to.
Yes, it's a good way of raising funds.
But it's also a good way of just getting general support and connecting.
And helping even present students because graduates are very often willing to do that kind of thing.
Most institutions send out money, don't do it from departments, but they do it from the institution.
They send out notices that they don't want to say.
Would you be willing to mentor a student in your field, have income in the day with you, or even a car firm?
So I think that will come.
Hard to keep up with people.
But I think the alumni association is doing a better job now keeping up with people.
It's possible.
It's easier to do that.
Yeah, that would be nice because I think the students, each, and,
true, every of those, each generation of students, has no concept about what the history of what we're not before.
I mean, I know the faculty and I know that some of them have been here for a long time.
But if they would connect better knowing something about the students here.
I enjoy it.
Yeah, that's what they do.
I think that's the first group to have a culture of something like this.
Right.
So when you compare, when you think about the program at its beginning and the department's the way it is now,
what are some of the major differences that you see?
And similarity, I guess, too.
Well, I think that in some ways, when the program first started, it was more closely met.
There were a few of people.
There was a feeling of being pioneering or being in the siege of both.
And people kind of set together.
There was a lot of meeting together, talking together, seeing one another quite often.
And that's a little less though now.
Because we have a departmental set up and sometimes it was a little bit too much.
And I think that's a little bit more of a special week that we've had one come there in the middle period.
We have faculty meetings.
They seem to come up every week.
They were big meetings at which not too much could get accomplished.
So the program has experimented with lots of different ways of doing it.
A few of faculty meetings and having a steering committee meet more often.
Having tried to have a big faculty meeting a couple of ones or twice a semester.
But since a lot of the people who are not blind is not only in one study,
are kept pretty busy in their other departments too.
It's hard to get a lot of attendance and participation.
But we do have a core now of people who are doing it.
Somehow I think that out of the academic beyond the academic there isn't as much kind of closer.
But that's probably inevitable.
Yes, that's a kind of cost of growth.
And so you said, well, you know, that was such a nice atmosphere then.
It was different.
And we certainly have many more courses now.
I think we have more students.
Although we always, it was always a track of the students.
I wasn't having a question.
I wasn't having a student track.
Especially with those early courses.
The literature courses had a perspective.
So it is different.
The atmosphere is different.
But I think that's inevitable.
And as a matter of course, the body said something in the meetings today.
Like we hardly know what another reason.
Because she was remembering that we used to have, we used to get together once or twice a year.
That we used to call advances and factory treats.
And so there was a little business conducted at them.
But they basically were ways of meeting outside of the university and socializing a little bit and really getting to know people.
And we haven't done that in a while.
Like nobody has the energy to organize one.
And so I don't know whether that means that that practice has also run its course at the time.
Some day somebody will get some energy back in.
But I think it was good.
I think there is a little danger of people getting too much involved in their own personal professional.
And those professional pursuits and not co-hearing.
I mean that hasn't happened.
It's in times of need.
People can rally around.
But it's when you don't have any kind of an emergency looming.
But people go off and they run their own direction.
But it still is amazing how loyal people have been,
whose major appointment is not in the study.
Because they believe in one of the studies and what they teach in their own department.
It's very often cross-listed and it's related to one of the studies and they do have this attachment to the department.
We may maybe haven't done quite so much to find out among the new people hired.
Whether there's anybody, whether the people are there that would also be new recruits to them.
But there's been a lot of women hired.
Now obviously a lot of women are interested in women's studies.
But I think there probably are few in the met.
There's a lot of work.
There's a lot of work.
Because as some of us retire,
you let me live in a fresh blood and even just bodies.
People who are willing to do the work.
Even when it was a program,
but I think it's more so when it's a department that people come on board and then come over and say,
hey, I'm really interested in women's studies.
Can I get involved in something like that's very unusual.
You usually have to go out to them and tell them a little bit about the program and the department
and ask them if they might be interested in inviting them to a meeting and see what's involved.
And then there's always a little bit of anxiety on the part of junior people
if they're on tenured,
a divide, taking their attention away from places where their tenured's going to be decided.
Because having been on the campground promotion and continuing the appointment for a couple of years,
I've seen a number of cases of people who do research,
which is very closely allied to, certainly, about women.
But I don't think anyone has ever been interested or been approached.
I mean, I didn't even know that.
These people have the better effect.
But it's an example of how, in some ways,
we, oh, this is an issue that was an interesting one.
And it was one that we talked about a lot after Bonnie Spaniacan, as directed,
since one of the areas that she has as her area of expertise is curriculum transformation.
We had this ongoing discussion about whether the program should be putting its efforts
into curriculum transformation or into developing its own curriculum.
And generally, we came down, I think people came down on the side of,
we have a limited amount of energy,
and it's more important right now to do our own things,
and not go out and try to get other departments and other people to start doing women's studies.
That was right or wrong, I don't know.
But in fact, a lot of curriculum transformation happened,
sort of on its own by department firing.
People interested in work on women,
and actually developing subfields and tracks,
stuff having to do with the musicians.
Sort of amazing that is, like, just by having,
maybe just by having the women's studies there,
and at the same time, there being a certain amount of pressure,
I think, from various women's groups about hiring more women,
some women are going to be hired, but have this interest,
and then they started this thing going within their own department,
and so that's not universally true across the university,
but it's happening in separate departments.
Sociologies, good examples.
History would have looked, and history would have had,
you know, June Haunted, been there from the early day,
but she was alone, person with nobody interested in it.
What you were doing from that point of view,
a long time.
So I think, I don't know whether that happened anywhere else.
I think that is a thing to look very interesting, phenomenal,
because a number of institutions have had conscious curriculum transformation,
and the discussion about those programs,
does it happen from the top down, very often it was administered,
it is the setting we need to have this, there's some money to do it.
And I think, from things that I've looked at,
but funny would be a better person to talk to about this,
that it didn't happen, or didn't take hold in any place
that didn't already have some nucleus of women's studies,
as a program on a minor, something like that.
I think that some administrators might have seen it as a beginning,
as a way to avoid having a program or department.
That's just pretty rough.
But you know, could make intellectually a certain amount of sense,
but it didn't, because you need to start from the beginning,
and the beginning is having something which is really focusing
just on women, and then the end, the transformations of that curriculum
equally represents those groups.
So I think that the presence of a core,
even if it wasn't a big program, but people who actually did it.
And so in many ways it was the energy and work of that core of women
that got those programs going.
And probably in a lot of cases,
that the expense of women's studies itself.
And of course the issue was, you know,
she's women's studies self-destruct,
and it's successful, or is there an ongoing need to keep it as a program?
Something unique to it.
Yeah, it's still an issue.
Should you be talking about it?
So let's see all those kind of programs,
and we definitely have experience.
Well that has somehow things that will self-destruct,
because we're going to do history.
History will be good all of that, you know?
But if that ever happens, it's a long way off.
Yes, I think so.
We'll turn it off for a minute.
Do you remember, at one time there was quite a bit of community involvement in the study?
And do you remember the sequence of events?
Do you remember the people who were involved?
No, I'm trying.
That's very vague, didn't I?
I do remember that we had community members on the advisory committee.
I remember that.
I cannot off-can now remember anybody who was involved.
Somebody mentioned names, I might remember.
Yeah, part of the show was sure of writing, and then the traffic Ferguson.
Sure, right, yeah.
That's right, and it was, they were...
And I don't know when that all stopped, or how it used up.
It was as if people just sort of drifted or Kathy left.
And Elaine got involved in doing things with Sienna and Martha.
Cheryl got involved in the Wooten's building.
And then they never got replaced.
I don't think there was ever any conscious decision not to have community people,
but maybe in terms of making it more...
Don't think that we were...
Academically, yeah, that it would need to look more academic.
Right, not to be...
And in fact, I think those people were not playing a very active role by that time.
But I don't remember that in detail.
Very vague.
What about the action of the people who have taught many of our culture over the years?
Yes, I don't know.
Did you have a lot of contact, much contact with them?
No, I mean, I knew some troops or landowners, and Aryans, you know.
But I hadn't had much direct contact.
It seems to me also that they were the more involved early on in terms of...
Beyond just teaching, of course, than they happened.
I don't think it was...
But it could also be because we had just compiled it the last minute.
We haven't known one day to the next whether that is going to be.
No, in a sense, that might be another price that's paid by institutionalization,
and I'm becoming an academic department here.
And whether it's necessary to pay that price, I don't know.
I think it might...
Maybe you have to go through certain phases, and it might be trying to start it up again in another guy.
And I think that, in a sense, that was going on currently with this movement to have a consortium of one of the studies.
Programs in the area, maybe another way of doing that, then...
Obviously, it doesn't get people that are completely out of colleges involved.
We talked a lot in the early days about getting high school people involved,
about getting out into the high school.
That was an issue, actually, just in general.
I remember even...
But I think the feminist press was doing a lot.
They were trying to put out text and things that would be used in high school with the idea that...
That's where the interest could begin, and that was in some ways the most important place to start people thinking about in the studies.
And I think that it succeeded to a certain extent.
I think there's some of that in some schools.
But as an official kind of policy or initiative by College of the City of Southern Steps,
that seems to have died.
Again, you know, everybody's got to concentrate their energies.
And we look like first things first.
But I still think that that's a good idea.
I mean, in general, I think that it needs to be more contact and communication between the high schools and higher education.
And, you know, it ends up kind of lengthy because old is complaining about the students that come to us from high school.
And if we have no contact with the teachers in high school,
but somehow we don't have the right to complain, I don't think that's specific to women's studies.
Oh, no, I don't think so.
My thing is true.
And it's even even less of the involvement of community colleges.
So now in this consortium, I think some of the community colleges...
Really? I think maybe...
I'm not sure.
I can't remember how to list the names today.
The Hudson Valley is involved in women's studies.
I'm not sure they must be.
I remember that consortium, it would make sense.
But what was interesting is that now all the new law school is...
That's the other side of it.
That is very, very nice.
I think that's the whole connection of education not being...
Oh, this is women's studies, something to do in college.
And if you get about it or beforehand you don't know anything about it,
I think that it can be made in continuing part.
And I think that the high school people, teachers that I've known,
and I haven't known very many, certainly my mother's school was very active in doing that on ice.
She still is.
But I think probably it was one of the reasons that she was involved.
How did she even got...
She was never stupid to me.
I think Joan thinks it came from the pocket.
Or one of the community.
Maybe the capital district.
The capital district women's.
Yeah, I wasn't involved in that.
That was in those early days.
A lot of the people who were not directly part of SUNY came to know one another and came through that.
And that was a good thing, a lot of energy.
I want to try to speak all over the place.
I think it kind of has to take advantage of all kinds of opportunities.
Example, I was really surprised, but I got a call to ask me if I would give a talk on language in gender
in honor of...
You would say, three months.
And it came from a group I had never heard of in my life.
The National Credit Union Administration.
How interesting.
And what happened is that apparently...
Which is the group...
Which is the regular...
Like they regulate the credit unions like Van, Greg, but...
And it's a federal agency, but it's run out of dues paid by the credit unions rather than by tax money.
And they apparently have a policy of recognizing special months like black history months, whatever.
Bannet, heritage months.
And so I had my name with the Met speakers directorate.
So this would be an interesting topic.
So, you know, whatever.
This is a group of people who probably never heard of women studies or never heard about women.
And you know, you could see, because I always try, in fact, I talk to a group like that,
of including certain situations that I know that they would have come across,
like the situation of being the only woman in a meeting, saying things and having nobody pay attention to it.
And then somebody, some man, saying something a little later,
and everybody saying what a good idea.
And they all kind of used percolp and said, oh yeah, we know about that.
So, but I do...
I mean, it's for some sort of burden on people.
You've got to be always going around being willing to let more people in on what women studies is all bad and what it can do.
But I do think it's important because it's still a big puzzle.
I guess I'm used to being in disciplines that are still big puzzles.
People don't know what linguistics is either.
And I think that's important.
Because I think that there is, although there's, you know, kind of conservative tendency to say,
no, what do we need?
Women studies for, but I think there is a lot of potential goodwill and even support.
And that I think has really increased over the past 10 years.
Women are willing to now come out and say that.
This was an example that had nothing to do with women studies, but it was happy to be with women.
I've been going around trying to get door prizes for a Zonta benefit and done business.
Women service organization and the proceeds go to three women's organizations.
Girl club and the next step which is from recovering alcoholism, drug abuse people, and the displaced home makers.
And people have been, you know, I've got a couple of nights for prizes, but a couple people have said,
I really like this because it has to do with women because it supports women.
And so these were women that said it, but it's okay.
You get that idea that, I don't know, 10 years ago, not too many people would have said that.
And, you know, this is a fairly young woman actually.
And you know, you get people talk about, well, a lot of young women don't think they have to be feminists
because they think, or study women studies because they think the battle's been won.
And then you really get the quality and they're all going to be okay.
But I think that that maybe true.
I think that maybe it's a bit different drive because I think that Vivian has been going out into the community.
And then talking to groups and getting some community women's groups,
if not involved, at least knowledgeable about things.
And then if that's not the same as bringing them in.
But maybe that's not what we need right now.
What do you see for the future of the department?
If you see anything for the future.
Oh, I see a graduate. I see graduate programs.
I see you master's in PhD.
I think that, you know, I think it has a bright future.
I don't think it's ever going to have like hundreds of majors and hundreds of graduates do in terms of people specializing in it.
But I think it's going to grow.
And I think it's going to have a nice solid space because it definitely is a need for it
and also a recognition on the part of the community.
And I think maybe even more so at the graduate level.
For people, both people who have taken one of the studies as undergraduates,
and people who might have just taken a course or two.
And when they begin to set their own goals or go into their own careers,
want to do something that is viewed in some way towards serving women.
And so I want to come back and maybe do another master's or particularly a master's in the ministry.
So I think that this is a bright future for you.
And I think, obviously, the undergraduate is going to be important.
And maybe more so in terms of students taking courses and maybe mind-blowing it.
So I don't know how much undergraduate majors are going to grow in number.
But I do think that the graduate is going to have a good education.
Again, it's not going to have psychology.
God knows how much graduate is going to be.
But everybody thinks that's the only way to get a job is to get a job.
But a person who's in psychology and wants to do women's studies,
is that's a really strong combination.
It's a wonderful combination with a number of different things.
And there's obviously need for...
And we see it even now.
I mean, the numbers may be our huge, but in the Dr. Rott's in the new studies,
there's always some students who come into it because they want to do something else
that could combine it with women's studies.
I had a student from RPI, a graduate student who took my course in my engineering class,
a master.
And she is getting a master's there in intermediate art, in a special arts program.
But she said she wanted to go on.
And the reason she wanted to go on was that she wanted to do some more work with texts
and with feminist theory.
So did I have any ideas?
Then I said, well, you want to teach.
You know, in academic...
I don't know, I'm being ours, but I want to know more about this.
So I suggested that the APR in which you could combine the RN and feminist theory.
And she wanted to speak to the media, to speak to Roberta.
And she's got accepted.
I don't know whether she's actually going to come.
But who knows?
I think as an undergraduate from the British, she even has any ideas.
And I don't know at all.
But I'm going to tell you how it's kind of late.
So she said, I need to know more about this.
I need to read more.
So let me turn it off.
Okay.
