If My Father Sent Me to Old Rutgers, Does that Mean My Mom Was in the Kitchen?

In case you couldn't tell, I go to Rutgers. It's a pretty old school, one of the first to be established in the United States, to be exact. With this old age comes a very old Alma Mater that is sang at the end of many sports competitions. The lyrics are so old, you can tell that they're dated in the opening lyrics, which are May father sent me to old Rutgers/And resolved that I should be a man. Thankfully, Rutgers allows more than just guys now, and about fifty-three percent of the school is female-identified.

Rutgers is really well known for its diversity, in fact, your application asks you to write an essay and inform the school about how you will add to it as a student. It makes sense. Rutgers has well known departments that range from gender studies to pharmacy, history to biology, philosophy to engineering. Artsy kids, frat boys, science nerds, and hipsters eat in the same dining halls and live on the same campuses. It's not always harmonious, but it's certianly functioning.

Another part of campus that is particularly unique is Douglass College. Douglass College is an all-girl's program that specializes in the uniting and strengthening of women and their ability to be leaders in the world. The dissolving of all the campuses at Rutgers has resulted in Douglass girls to be a part of the Rutgers community, even though they are allowed perks such as all-girl housing, extra advisers, and required courses with names such as women's leadership.

For some reason, whether it's college, or it's high school, or it's just society in general, being unique commonly results in flack from the rest of the population. I vividly remember that while I was walking through Douglass to my, er, women's and gender studies course last semester, I saw that someone wrote in chalk "Where the feminists live" underneath the Douglass seal on the side of a pathway. There's also the assumption that every Douglass girl is a lesbian (which is sadly not true). Most people complete the Douglass girl stereotype with the fact that every Douglass girl is a crazy, man-hating, bitch.

This image of Douglass girl resulted into a hot mess on my Facebook feed when the DGC (Douglass's student government) announced that the alma mater should be changed to no longer have the male-oriented lyrics.

I'm sure, being known as a lesbian feminist occasional bitch, I'm sure a lot of people assumed that I was pro-lyric change. However, as a history major, I say no way in hell should the lyrics be changed. While, yeah, the lyrics are definitely aimed toward men, you can't deny that it shows the school's age, in a good way. Alma maters are based in tradition that may not always be politically correct. The best way to avoid these kind of issues, because they always do come up, is to simply do things with gender equality in mind.

While going through comments, I've realized that most people, even Douglass students, don't really agree with the alma mater change, and most of this has been made up by the DGC. The DGC's opinion does not necessarily reflect the rest of Douglass campus. However, most people don't realize this, which has resulted in a lot of anger toward Douglass girls in general. I've seen offensive terms be thrown around, ranging from bitches, to cunts, to even taunting them with phrases such as "If Douglass is so progressive, why don't they allow guys in their program?"

It's interesting how a debate about an alma mater become so violent. It's okay to be against the alma mater change. I would even contemplate going up to the DGC and saying, "Hello, we all got bigger things to worry about in the women's rights movement." We should be focusing on the parts of campus that get so dark girls are afraid to walk around at night out of fear of getting raped. We should promote awareness of not just women's rights, but even people that don't fit the gender binary. We should also try and figure out how to make terms like feminist not be used as a weapon, but as a good thing.

While the DGC has brought the alma mater-related issues upon themselves, the violent threats and terms aimed at Douglass campus on a whole is not their fault. The only reason why terms like lesbians, feminists, and dykes are used as derogatory toward Douglass kids is because of the lack of education amongst many students in gender studies.

Douglass girls are required to take women's leadership courses. They learn to overcome obstacles and also learn gender theory along the way. In other Rutgers programs, students are allowed to take classes such as Women in Culture and Society-a 101 class on women's and gender studies-to knock out interdisciplinary requirements. This class can do wonders to people- yesterday we had an intelligent discussion about reproductive rights, which is something that I know for a fact we could not have done two months earlier. The people in the class have grown a lot in the semester. But while we've learned not to be scared of terms such as feminism, queer, and abortion, most people aren't. Because of this, the image of women speaking up in most situations, their opinions become disregarded and dismissed as the opinion of bunch of stupid cunts/dykes/feminists.

But what can the campus do to fix this? Well, we are a research university. Actually looking up the words you want to use can help. Don't call people feminists in a derogatory sense. You probably are one yourself. Realize that the issues of one part of a group doesn't necessarily represent everyone else. Not everyone that's a Douglass girl is for the alma mater change. And if you are mature enough to acknowledge that you need to be more educated in this field, and get credit for it, check out one of the women's and gender studies courses on campus. It'll make you sound less stupid when these kind of school dramas happen.