This response is written to address not only Mr. Srebro's article "Why Major?" but also general attitudes on this campus toward Women's Studies.

Mr. Srebro poses two questions: Why is women's studies offered as a major and what type of occupation does one enter with a Women's Studies degree?

Despite asking for answers to these two questions, he writes that he wants someone to "diminish my skepticism of the Women's Studies Department." I wonder if he challenges the validity of the women's studies major and/or the Women's Studies Department.

Nonetheless, a women's studies major is offered for students who seek to learn about 51 percent of the population -- women -- whose issues, experiences and history are often glossed over in other disciplines or simply not mentioned.

More "mainstream" courses focus almost completely on male theorists' views and conclusions based on research conducted on men (which has been wrongly assumed to mirror the experiences of women).

Women's studies courses teach about women, incorporating women's perpective. Because women and men have different experiences and realities, the exclusion of either women's or men's perspective in education offers and incomplete vision.

Until the more "mainstream" courses integrate women's contributions, perspec- tives and theories with those of men, women's studies is needed in order to offer students a complete education.

I often hear students on campus express doubts about taking a women's studies class and some men wonder why they should take a class that they feel does not apply to them because it focuses on women.

Yet the question could be reversed and instead ask what women have to learn from taking a course which focuses on men (as research subjects, theorists, historians, politicians, lawmakers). As ludicrous as this question may seem, it is equally ludicrous to question what we have to learn from women.

Some women's studies majors enter careers which can be subgrouped under: Activism, politics, lobbying, personnel and administrative. Some enter other fields, equipped with the knowledge of social issues that they have learned in women's studies classes.

I find it curious that women's studies is often the target of criticism. Is it because Women's Studies takes what some people consider a "radical" approach to learning because courses address taboo subjects in our society, thereby exposing the injustices that oppressed groups face?

Omitting women from mainstream teaching resembles censorship rather than education.