If you're unfamiliar with Smith College, it's one of the "Seven Sisters" colleges. Located in Northampton MA, it's a private, women's, liberal arts college that has always been highly regarded.
Notable alumnae include Nancy Reagan, Barbara Bush, Betty Friedan, Gloria Steinem, Julia Child, Madeleine L'Engle, Sylvia Plath, Sherry Rehman, Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy and Yolanda King.
I was offered admission to Smith in the eighties, along with Mount Holyoke and Wellesley, and I knew that it was due in part to their focus on diversity. I had both the GPA and SAT scores required for admission.
I also chose not to attend any of these schools in large part because I was unwilling to deal with people like Anne Spurzem, the subject of this diary. I didn't know her personally then or now, but I certainly knew her type. Then, as now.
Seems Anne, a Smith alum (Class of '84) is quite undone about her alma mater's current desirability as the college of choice for students in her social circle. I'm going to print Anne's letter to the college paper in its entirety. I believe it complies with fair use standards since it's a letter, and has been published in its entirety several other places.
To the Editor,
I am the president of the Smith Club of Westchester County. I enjoy reading the Sophian online because it helps me stay abreast of developments at the school.
I read your article about [President] Carol [Christ]'s resignation and it had some interesting statistics. It mentioned the percentage increase in the population of women of color and foreign students. The gist of the article was that one of Carol's objectives coming into the position was to increase diversity and the article gave statistics that showed that she did.
As someone who has followed admissions for many years, I can tell you how the school is viewed by students in Westchester and Fairfield Counties. First, these counties are some of the wealthiest in the country. The children have parents who are highly educated and accomplished and have high household incomes. The children are programmed from day one to get into Ivy League schools.
To this demographic, Smith is a safety school. Also, very few of these students want to go to a single sex school. With the exception of Wellesley, it is not hard to get into the Seven Sisters any more. The reason why Wellesley is more selective is because it is smaller than Smith and in a better geographic location – Boston beats Northampton.
The people who are attending Smith these days are A) lesbians or B) international students who get financial aid or C) low-income women of color who are the first generation in their family to go to college and will go to any school that gives them enough money. Carol emphasizes that this is one of her goals, and so that's why the school needs more money for scholarships or D) white heterosexual girls who can't get into Ivy League schools.
Smith no longer looks at SATs because if it did, it would have to report them to U.S. News & World Report. Low-income black and Hispanic students generally have lower SATs than whites or Asians of any income bracket. This is an acknowledged fact because they don't have access to expensive prep classes or private tutors.
To accomplish [President Christ's] mission of diversity, the school is underweighting SAT scores. This phenomenon has been widely discussed in the New York Times Education section. If you reduce your standards for grades and scores, you drop in the rankings, although you have accomplished a noble social objective. Smith has one of the highest diversity rates in the country.
I can tell you that the days of white, wealthy, upper-class students from prep schools in cashmere coats and pearls who marry Amherst men are over. This is unfortunate because it is this demographic that puts their name on buildings, donates great art and subsidizes scholarships.
-Anne Spurzem '84
http://jezebel.com/...
So Anne's upset that Smith is now viewed by her ilk as a "safety" school. Having just gone through the college admissions process with my son (obviously Smith wasn't on the list) I can tell you that the concept of a "safety" school can be highly subjective.
One person's reach school is another person's safety. Sure there are some constants like Harvard, Stanford, Princeton etc. When it comes to schools like Smith ( my son attends a co-ed "elite" liberal arts college so there are no sour grapes here) there are a number of them and someone's always going to feel like the one they don't like is someone else's "safety" school.
But to Anne's vapor inducing point about why Smith is now considered a safety school...LESBIANS and WOMEN of COLOR! Someone grab me a fainting couch!
I got a news flash for you Anne. Smith has always had lesbians. They may have been closeted or not but there they were. The Jesuit college I did choose to attend had lesbians and it was co-ed and Catholic. ALL schools that admit women likely have lesbian students.
As for women of color...yep...us too. The first known black student was Otelia Cromwell in 1898.
And unless all those brochures Smith mailed me years ago were lying, there were several non-white women in attendance at the time Anne was there, albeit not the majority which no one has ever argued to be the case.
Poor Anne...she is beside herself because all these lesbians and women of color are overtaking the campus and turning off all the rich white families who endow things. Apparently only white heterosexuals donate money. Won't someone think of the future buildings!
Fortunately, not all of the alum share Anne's narrow mind and have swiftly condemned her letter. And Smith must be doing something right in educating its current population, even in the midst of its "diversity driven decline" because current students have told her where she can put her concern.
I wonder if Anne's a Santorum supporter? Then she'll have to reconcile getting lesbians out of her college with kids wanting to go to college in the first place.
Update: Thanks to pat of butter in a sea of grits for finding and posting a link to Spurzem's damage control, I mean response to her letter: Woman says Smith College comments misconstrued