As a returning student finishing a BA I abandoned twenty-four years ago, I was thrilled to see that SUNY Old Westbury finally has a Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies (WGSS) major, decades past when many other schools with strong social justice initiatives started theirs. When I first started at O.W. in 1998, I wanted to major in what was then called Women’s Studies, however the school only had a minor in the discipline. Going through the catalog, I realized that the American Studies department offered many courses related to women and sexuality, so I picked that as my major and proceeded to take as many courses focused on gender as I could.

I dropped out for personal reasons in 2000, but always planned to return. In the summer of 2023, I decided that it was now or never and applied for readmission to O.W. for the fall semester. Originally I declared American Studies again, until I looked at the University’s website one night and saw the school had just started offering a WGSS major. When I met with my advisor for my second semester, I immediately changed my major, finally on the academic path I wanted to be on all along.

O.W. has a long history of not just social justice, but specifically feminist scholarship and organizing. The Feminist Press was run out of a building on the campus from 1971 to 1985, led by professor Florence Howe. Second wave feminist icons such as Barbara Ehrenreich and Rosalyn Baxandall also taught at the college. The creation of a WGSS program has been long overdue.

“WGSS is an interdisciplinary area of study that explores how ideologies of gender, sex, and sexuality intersect with social and cultural systems that shape people’s lives,” states an info card promoting the new major. “Old Westbury’s WGSS program develops students who are critical thinkers and advocates for social justice. The program uses feminist theory and methods to center the experience of marginalized groups within many fields of study.”

The work toward the University finally offering this major did not start recently. According to Dr. Jillian Crocker, an associate professor of sociology and the director of the WGSS program and its accompanying Center, “This major has been an idea that’s been budding and growing for the past twenty-five, thirty years. That work has looked like faculty members developing courses, departments prioritizing offering courses on topics of gender and sexuality, us working to raise awareness that these are academic issues that apply to people of all genders.”

There are a lot of steps taken when the university wants to add a new major. First, a steering committee was formed to develop a curriculum. Then, they had to apply to SUNY at the state level to get approval. After that, the committee had to inform faculty and staff they were starting a WGSS major and make sure they had advisers and a course schedule. Now, they are at the stage of making sure that students know the major exists.

Unlike other majors at OW, WGSS is a program rather than a department, which means that rather than having its own dedicated faculty, the major draws on faculty from across departments, mostly in the School of Arts and Sciences, but also from the School of Education. According to Professor Crocker, this is intentional, because it facilitates the interdisciplinary nature of the major. Credit is offered for courses across six programs and departments, including American Studies, English, Sociology, and Public Health. Currently, most are cross-listed with other departments in the School of Arts and Sciences and the School of Education. WGSS offers a few directly, and is adding more, including “Sex, Gender, and Technology” to be taught by Sociology professor Rachel Kalish starting Spring 2025. There is also a two credit “Special Topics” course that focuses on a different issue each semester. For Spring 2024, Sociology professor Keisha Goode will be teaching “Birth, Death, and Justice.”

Professor Crocker says she knows that the WGSS program and center have excellent support from the faculty and from the Dean of the School of Arts and Sciences, Cheryl Wilson, who has been “incredibly supportive of this emerging program.” She went on to say, “anything that serves the departments that support our program is also supporting us.” There have been a number of faculty who study and teach gender and sexuality related issues hired over the past few years in affiliated departments. “Anytime a department gets to hire someone and that person can contribute to this major, we’re benefiting,” Crocker said.

There are currently eight students enrolled in the major, four of whom are double-majoring in WGSS and something else. This is above the steering committee’s projected enrollment for this time period, which was six. I interviewed two students also in the major, Danielle (who asked that her last name not be used) and Alyssandra Membreno, who is double-majoring in WGSS and psychology.

Danielle is a senior who returned to school to complete a bachelor’s degree after earning an associate’s degree after high school. She worked in the beauty industry for seven years and spent her free time reading and learning feminist theory, sociology, and psychology. Her reading started with issues women faced and then branched out to study other forms of oppression. She was originally a Psychology major, but after seeing the WGSS table at the Academic Discovery Fest, she went over to learn more and would later change her major in the middle of her first semester back last fall.

“I believe the WGSS major has a positive impact on campus. Especially with our school’s history and being one of the first schools to offer Women’s Studies classes [and] being the first home of the Feminist Press,” Danielle said. “This major is not just about women and it’s not just about gender, it’s about all the social constructs and power dynamics that cause inequality. SUNY Old Westbury is a diverse campus that is committed to social justice, and this major is an extension of that.”

Alyssandra Membreno, who uses they/she pronouns, has always had an interest in social justice, especially because they are non-binary and queer. As an oppressed minority, they had to pay attention to these things. Similarly to myself and Danielle, Membreno found out about the major by chance, from a comment from another student in a class. They then just happened to meet Professor Crocker and informed her that they were interested in majoring in WGSS. Membreno declared their double major in WGSS and Psychology shortly after.

“[WGSS] has given me the lens to know more about why issues affect me and [to] have the language to be like ‘Oh, this is an issue,’ and a social problem,” Membreno stated. According to them, professors affiliated with WGSS acknowledge that people assigned female at birth are often socialized to not raise their hands in class because they’re afraid to be wrong or to take up space. Professor Keisha Goode, a Sociology professor who teaches a number of WGSS courses, often asks her classes “Who’s afraid to be wrong?” as a way to get them to risk answering questions.

A common question, not just about the WGSS major, but for many majors – is “How can I use this towards a career?” According to the info card, “The WGSS major prepares students for a wide variety of careers.” It is a path for careers in education, social work, the healthcare field, and the law, for some examples. Students can continue with graduate study or find work in non-profit organizations, for example. Crocker points out that, like many of the majors the school offers, WGSS is a liberal arts degree, so it does not translate into one specific career path. The program has students planning on using their WGSS major as they pursue a master’s in social work or graduate degrees in sociology or psychology. One student wants to combine their interests in WGSS and English to pursue a career in publishing. Students in Media & Communications are using WGSS to provide the topics of their journalism. “You can do anything with this major,” Crocker states. “The question is ‘how can WGSS add some dimension to something else that you’re interested in pursuing?’” Both Danielle and Membreno are interested in continuing with graduate degrees in social work or psychology so they can pursue careers in counseling.

An important co-curricular space, not only for folks in the WGSS major or the Women’s and Gender Studies (WGS) minor, but for students of all genders throughout the university, is the WGSS Center. Housed in the Social and Environmental Justice Center (SEJI) in Woodlands 1, it may be somewhat out of the way, but it is a welcoming and affirming space. The walls are full of everything from photos of faculty and students who addressed issues of women, gender, and sexuality over the years (the ‘Founders’ Wall) to posters addressing issues related to feminism, reproductive justice, queer and trans rights, and other topics.

Staffed by student interns and volunteers, and supervised by Professor Crocker, the cozy three-room center is both a drop-in space (Monday to Thursday, 12-5) and presents more structured events. An event flyer for just the month of October lists events about sexual assault on campus, the LGBTQIA+ representation in the Netflix show Heartstoppers, queer punk, and Election 2024: From Cat Ladies to Cat Eaters – the politics of likability, masculinity & intersectionality from media to ballot. This wide range of events depicts the interdisciplinary nature of studying WGSS, whether as a major, minor, or in this co-curricular space.

Danielle, who is interning at the Center this semester, said that even if you’re not majoring in WGSS, “come down to the Center and […] meet other students and hang out with us.” Membreno is a volunteer at the Center, and says they bring their friends over, because most people don’t even realize it’s there. The goal is for it to be a safe, welcoming space, which, in my opinion, it has achieved. The Center offers everything from a free clothing rack, to pins and stickers to snacks and drinks, as well as a lending library of books on topics related to WGSS. It’s a low-key place to come and study or just hang out.

As Professor Crocker states, “We, of course, should underscore that both of these types of work – the academic work of the WGSS Program and the co-curricular work of the WGSS Center – are incredibly relevant to pressing political and social justice issues that we are grappling with in society at a more general level.” Or to put it more simply, as Membreno did, “[WGSS] makes you cooler!”