Closure of Canada’s only women’s university prompts protest on Tuesday
Students, faculty and alumni say they were caught off-guard by decision to merge Brescia into Western.
Kinda conflicted here. Universities segregated based on sex/gender seem unnecessary to me, and merging with Western doesn't sound like a terrible plan.
But also I suspect this is done more for profit so I'm not convinced the merge will be handled well
According to the FAQ they make it sound like it's more about making end's meet.
It sucks when any school has to close or merge with another, but I don't think this one deserves any special attention just because it was gender segregated. Aren't women outnumbering men in university population anyways?
Edit: Yup
Outnumbered by a fairly large margin too.
I admit that there may be some virtue in terms of safety at an all girls' school... but gender exclusive institutions are still pretty cringe-worthy.
The school accepted boys into classes where Western did not have equivalency, so even if we buy into some narrative that girls are only safe if segregated from boys, that was already not the case.
Yeah, as someone who went to Huron (which is right next door to Brescia and has a similar arrangement with Western), this isn't a good thing. The Western affiliates (Huron, Brescia, Kings) are a great option for getting a university degree and benefitting from the resources of a university while still getting the smaller class sizes and more intimate feel of a college. I was even able to double major with a program on Western's main campus. I got a management major from Huron and a Comp Sci major from Western.
I'm a disabled queer immigrant white dude that would cringe hard at the very notion of excluding somebody from a community just because they are able-bodied, straight, indigenous, non-white or female. Imagine a university that excluded non-whites -- why should we tolerate universities that exclude men? It's sexism plain and simple. It goes against every other progress we've made in civil rights in the last century.