December 11, 2015 - 10:06
During the process of this 6-week project about gender in BM, especially in the process of interviews of women in BM with current students in BM, I came to another curiosity. That is, how do my fellows in my own college will answer to these same questions? Tsuda College, my own college is also a small women’s college. It has a long relationship with BM since the founder of Tsuda was an alumnus of BM. In my impression, it is very similar to BM in many aspects, as some professors know both colleges say “Tsuda is BM in Japan and BM is Tsuda in US”. However the gender roles in these two colleges are very different. BM is very friendly to all gender minorities and is very flexible with “change” in order to pursue further more comfortable and safe place for every student. In contrast, in my opinion, Tsuda has a trend to hesitate changes and stays in its old-fashioned style. While BM is not a traditional women’s college anymore, Tsuda is. Most students in Tsuda including me have an assumption that there is no conflict or anything to say Tsuda is a “women’s college” as students there are women identify themselves as “straight women”, or even many of us do not think of gender identities. I would like to see how does it influence to students in Tsuda if I share the conception of “women’s college” in BM with them.
All of 6-week project presentations were very interesting. Bi-co community, animals, museum, clothing, Free or For Sale, honor code, payment of dining services, food in dining services, Latino, Muslim, gender sexuality, class styles… I learnt so many and my contact zone was expanded in these two days. These researches could be our first step to see what is happening in this college and to move forward. As I learnt that BM is flexible with changes in my project, each of our consideration, suggestion or question will be reflected on this campus unless we stop our progress.