By Lauraly Atria

The Women’s Studies program, still hoping to become an official department at Northeastern, celebrated its 25th anniversary last Thursday in the Clifford Lounge in Churchill Hall.

The event included speeches by Professor and Director Robin Chandler, the sixth and current director of the Women’s Studies Program, and Christine Gailey, a former faculty member who flew in from California for the event.

Chandler is a founding member of the Graduate Consortium of Women’s Studies (GCWS), which has been active in the Boston area for 15 years. The GCWS seeks to work in partnership with other women’s studies programs in the Boston area.

Christine Gailey, who also spoke, first joined the Northeastern faculty in 1984 as a member of the History Department. After Gailey reached her tenure, she became the third director of the Women’s Studies program.

“[The program is] a way of keeping all the remarkable women in a place where we could have a discourse and ignore the noises around us,” Gailey said.

Although it is still not officially a department, the women behind the program said they feel it should have been made a department 10 years ago. Laura Frader, founder of the GCWS who preceded Gailey as the second director of the program, said she is very excited and optimistic about the years to come for the program.

“I think Northeastern is finally, finally making an attempt to address Women’s Studies,” Frader said.