[Ed. note: The post below is offered as part of our ongoing series of opinion pieces.   ACCUTE members may propose opinion pieces for the blog, provided they engage issues of interest to the broader ACCUTE membership; if accepted, they are subject to editing for length and other matters.  This and other such opinion pieces reflect the author’s own views, and do not necessarily represent the opinion of ACCUTE or its membership; they are offered in hopes of generating discussion among our members.]

Many of us have been following the ongoing challenges facing Mount Allison’s Women’s and Gender Studies Program.  The initial report indicated that the program’s entire teaching budget had been cut, and so no core courses would be offered.  Later reports–following student protests–stated that half of the funding that was offered this year for teaching had been returned (though, as indicated in edits to this article, this seems already to be much less support than the program recently had).  I’m sure many of us could, sadly, find examples of women’s and gender studies programs across the country being similarly underfunded, despite the fact that this is a moment to increase, not diminish, the capacity and centrality of such programs, for all the reasons our colleagues at Hook and Eyehave pointed out.

While some funding has been returned, still this is a moment to reaffirm the place of Women’s and Gender studies at Mount Allison and in universities across the country; so, given those points, and thanks to a timely request from our colleagues at WSGRF, I am posting this electronic petition for you to sign if you feel so inclined.  –Jason