University of Saskatchewan Campus

I find Saskatoon Campus to be large, confusing and not very well marked; I think they may have left signage out for aesthetics. A lot of places in Saskatoon are hidden just beyond view, requiring a little more ambition to get access to the knowledge of what is inside and seeming more exclusive than both University of Regina and Lakehead University. I find the campus to be patriarchally dominant through the architecture of the space, I feel while I am walking between buildings that I am somewhere I do not belong. The architecture has been said by many to be beautiful and in a way it is with huge stone buildings with large wood trim, buildings like at Western in London, Ontario, only not as old. They carry the feel of traditional patriarchal male institutions yet were built more recently, since feminist revolution brought different thinking into educational institutions. So it makes me question whether the campus is this an attempt for architectural beauty or a reliance on the patriarchal tradition of the institution?

The public space on campus consists of people of all ages including families and doesn’t seem to favour homosexual over heterosexual in the areas I have experienced. My classes all consist of a large amount of feminists and queer theorists and the professors I have seen and heard about have been dominantly female probably because of my connection with Women and Gender Studies, rather than a more male dominated field such as physics. Universities are known for having a larger enrolment of women than men, especially within the arts and while I see that reflected in the participants of my class, I don’t see a dominant feminine nature but a genderless mix of intellectuals.

I am not familiar with the participants of Women’s Studies at other universities other than a rare few friends, so I compare my class with the people I have found within fine arts and there is an impressive amount of accepting and alternative identities, more than I expected for sure. I was immediately comfortable with the people in my class and didn’t feel any issues of power influencing my interaction with them. The intellectual social body of the university doesn’t seem to match the dominant architecture they exist in on a daily basis.