Student looks back on Women's Studies classes

Women's Studies at McNeese

Vol. 3 No. 1, December 2002

Student looks back on Women's Studies classes

I didn’t really want to take a Women’s Studies class.

I was at school when the Women’s Studies department was founded, and I didn’t care. It seemed rather silly. Study women? What for? What is there to be taught? I thought, surely, everyone knows that the sexes are different but equal. I knew that, in the past, women couldn’t vote and they were underprivileged, but I thought that we had pretty much fixed that. My parents had never told me I couldn’t do something because I was female.

I also suspected that they were there to push a subjective agenda. I figured that the classes would give biased information on controversial issues and be rife with male-bashing. I didn’t want a teacher telling me what to believe.

In short, I dismissed Women’s Studies without much thought. Then in Spring of 2000, my best friend called me up and asked if I’d like to go with her to her Women’s Studies class. They were opening class to the public that day to garner interest in the program. My friend told me that the class was ‘awesome’ and that I should go. So, I went.

The class sat in a circle, which was a bit unusual for me. Dr. Janet Allured was the instructor, and she asked her students to tell the visitors how they felt about the course. All comments were very positive and most of the students said that the course was very eye-opening and sometimes startling. I remember one woman’s comment, “I didn’t know that people even thought about some of this stuff!”

When the class proceeded to discuss the day’s reading, a short article on rape, I was fascinated. Dr. Allured guided the discussion, but her students were just as important to the class as she was. Everyone’s questions and opinions and personal experiences mattered. I decided that maybe Women’s Studies deserved more credit than I had originally given, so I registered for the introductory course that Fall, this time taught by Dr. Susan Kelso.

It was wonderful.

We weren’t bashing men. We weren’t given black and white answers. We weren’t forced to think a certain way. We read articles, essays, poems, stories, plays, studies, and song lyrics. We re-wrote Mother Goose rhymes from a feminist perspective, re-designed sexist advertisements, and held a Día de los muertos celebration to honor beloved and heroic dead women.

I finally understood why we have Women’s Studies. It sifts through history and rediscovers great women, giving modern women a “usable past” that we can identify with and take pride in. It studies the impact that language and gender roles have on our lives. It questions why we all know Salvador Dalí, but not Remedios Varo.

I have taken six classes altogether to complete my Women’s Studies concentration, delving deeper into religion, law, the arts, the family, and sexuality, and thinking about what it all means to me. I can’t come close to explaining everything that these studies have taught me, because they haven’t just “taught” me, they have revolutionized me.

Women’s Studies has shown me that our society has been shaped by white heterosexual Christian males. This is problematic because an institution built without the input of every gender, sexual orientation, race and ethnicity cannot purport to represent them. Women’s Studies works to make sure that we all get the representation we deserve.

Laurie Chancey
B.A. in Sociology, Fall 2001
Women’s Studies Concentration
Juliet Hardtner Endowment for Women in the Arts and Humanities Scholarship Recipient

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Laurie Chancey: Learning New Ways to Learn

McNeese State University Log

August 5, 1999

Laurie Chancey: Learning New Ways to Learn

By Janis Demarest

College was even more of a foreign experience for Laurie Chancey than it was to more traditionally educated students. Not only was she entering a university setting for the first time, but she also was entering into a formal education setting: a whole new world for her. Laurie's educational background was based on "unschooling," a theory of learning in which children were allowed to learn completely at their own pace, with no formal intervention.

Laurie Chancey's decision to continue her education was more of an ordeal than that of the average student. Chancey, a freshman psychology major, not only had to get used to a new campus but also had to get used to a new way of learning.

Many people were familiar with home schooling, but few knew anything about "unschooling." Unschooling was a theory that expressed the need for a child to learn at his or her own pace, rather than following a set curriculum. They learned when they were ready, and therefore, the theory went, there was never any pressure on them to learn. Chancey was the only student in Holt Neill High School, named after John Holt and A.S. Neill for their theories on unschooling.

"When I wanted to learn to read, Mom taught me. She would read to me, but I wanted to read myself," said Chancey. Since she wasn't in a regular school, Chancey didn't hang out with children her own age, but she associated with people of all ages. "I learned to converse with anyone of any age as well as relate. When I was seven or eight, I remember joining a discussion with my mom, dad, and grandmom about an article in Time magazine."

Valerie Chancey [Laurie's Note: now Fitzenreiter], Laurie's mother, entered the university as a freshman interior design major with her daughter. She believed that grades one through 12 were a waste of time for Laurie and "trusted that Laurie wouldn't be stupid." [Laurie's Note: this is not a real quote from Mom!] When applying to MSU, Chancey and her mother were told that without a high school diploma or GED certificate, Laurie would not be able to register.

When registration time came around and Laurie could only provide an English ACT score of 30 and a composite ACT score in the high 20's, MSU allowed Laurie to register without either of the much-needed documents.

[Laurie's Note: this isn't actually true. McNeese did tell us that I needed a high school equivalent the first time we called, but we kept checking and talked to another person who said that ACT scores would be sufficient. They didn't just make an exception for me because I had good scores.]

With an ACT score above the national average and a thirst for knowledge, Laurie Chancey took some time to get used to this new learning environment but would have no problems getting through college.

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