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Are Womens Colleges Outdated?

Tom Matlack thought womens colleges were anachronisticuntil he toured Barnard with his

daughter.

Ive always been skeptical about womens colleges. I grew up in Amherstwithin a few miles of Smith and Mount Holyoke where, I admit, I tried tosneak into parties as a high school student. Beyond serving a destination forhorny young men, the colleges always gave me the creeps, perhaps because Iwas explicitly excluded from the community or because of some juvenilefantasy that the schools harbored a lesbian cult. Still, the women who wentthere, it seemed to me, were living in some bygone gender-segregated erawhere such a place had a purpose. I assumed they went to womens collegeslargely because they couldnt get into the numerous elite coed schools.

Why go to Smith if you could go to Amherst?

Last year we faced what seemed like a momentous decision: whether to send

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our 5-year-old to an all-boys grade school for kindergarten. The school isknown for being particularly good at channeling high-spirited boy energyinto creativity and learning.

The theory goes that boys mature more slowly, on average, than girls,particularly when it comes to fine motor skills and reading. I had seen thisfirsthand when class art projects came home from nursery school. It was likesome pages were produced by art students and others by fingerless monkeysstick figures on one page, followed by pages awash with color and facesand feeling. Without exception, you didnt need to look at the name to knowthe gender. Many boys just want to run and tackle one another most of thetime, so having a school that emphasizes physical activity to calm theirminds and allows them space to develop creativity at their own pace madesense to me. And the school has a particularly strong tradition of characterdevelopment, which appeals to my good men orientation. But there wasonly one problem: no girls.

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The difference was made clear to me on a recent vacation. We traveled for10 days with one of our sons female nursery school classmates, whom hehadnt seen for over a year. He met up with his best male friend on the lastday. Our son has a sensitive and gentle spirit, but that doesnt mean he

doesnt like to play rough. For over a week, he played with his female friendnonstop. We started calling them the old married couple. I was impressednot only with how happy my son was but the ease of the play. With his malefriends the frenzy ultimately led to a crash, but the girl brought out the morecreative and mature side of him. They could have gone on forever, neveronce fighting. On the last day, when the male buddy showed up, we noticeda marked change. It got loud. Very loud. The little girl stood to the side tomake way for boys screaming, chasing each other, having a blast. All good. Ilove to see my son so happy. But to be honest, I liked him better when he

was with his female buddy. She taught him something his male friendcouldnt. (My wife has the same impact on me.)

We chose a coed kindergarten.

I have the privilege of raising a boy in kindergarten; his brother, who is inninth grade; and his sister, who is a high school junior just starting to look atcolleges. So after a week of watching my kindergartener play with his girlpal, I picked up my daughter and set off on an East Coast college tour. Onour list were NYU, Penn, Swarthmore, Bard, Vassar, Brown, and Barnard.My daughter is very involved in theater, so shes looking for a school thatwill allow her to get a liberal arts education while continuing to act. Shedlike someplace artsy, a little edgy, and urban if possiblebig, but not toobig. She doesnt really know, which is why we were going on this adventuretogether.

If you have ever been on a college tour you know the drill: an hour-long

information session with an admissions representative not-selling-but-sellinghis or her institution while telling you how hard it is to get in, followed by astudent-led tour. Too often they let freshmen that have no idea about theschool (or life in general) lead the tours. Out of frustration over thisignorance, my daughter came up with a litmus test: the condition of thebathroom toilet bowl in the student center. Her theory is that the cleanlinessof the toilet is a truth-teller, far more so than a freshman tour guide, when it

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comes to how students really feel about their college.

I personally liked Bard and Swarthmore. At Penn theres a free-standinghome right in the middle of campus, where students interested in writinghang out, cook meals, and work on their craft. The writing house isnt adorm; its just a creative club of sorts. We wandered in and found ourselvesface-to-face with Edward Albee, who was there giving a lecture. Mydaughter was particularly excited because she had acted in several of hisplays. (The toilets at Penn were disgusting in general, but at the writinghouse there is a Victorian-style bathroom with an old tub, complete with ivygrowing out of it and pictures on the wall of drag queens getting dressed.)

But an even bigger shock than meeting the best-known American playwrightin the flesh took place in the Morningside Heights neighborhood of NewYork City, home of Barnard College.

The tour was led by a senior in a stylish sweater dress and rubber boots toprotect against a steady rain that kept the city gray and gloomy. She showedus the student center, the various academic buildings, and the ways in whichBarnard is connected to Columbia (including, conveniently, thecentralization of all theatre at Barnard) and the ways they are separate. She

explained the advising, mentoring, small class sizes, and the tradition upheldby faculty and staff of serving breakfast to the students at midnight beforethe beginning of finals. She also spoke about how, while all the other IvyLeague schools had gone coed and merged with adjacent womens colleges,Barnard had stayed separate and all-women for a reason.

Why wouldnt you want to send your daughter to an institution whose solepurpose is to insure the success of women? she asked, looking my way.Three percent of women graduating from high school go to womens

colleges, and yet 30 percent of congresswomen went to womens collegesand 20 percent of the female CEOs. Theres a reason that is the case andthats why we are still here.

The pretty, confident, and articulate young woman had smacked me directlybetween the eyes of my teenage ignorance. Perhaps womens colleges dontexist solely for the benefit of their male guests, I thought for the first time.

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The information session started like all the others: a room full of nervousparents and bored-looking kids, all trying to hide their abject fear. A womanwith wet hair and an iced coffee sat down at the front of the room. Sheexplained that she had been up all night with her 17-month-old baby and

might be a bit off her game.

For the next hour I sat transfixed. These sessions are generally so repetitivethat I close my eyes to try to use the time productively by meditating. Exceptat Barnard. What I heard was an hour-long explanation and first-persondemonstration of what the tour guide had said in a couple of sentences: WhyBarnard had the resources of an Ivy League school but the feeling of a smallliberal arts college; how there are plenty of men to interact with in sports orsocial clubs, but that the school had remained all women on purpose; howfor the right young woman Barnard would provide a unique education andinspiration that a coed facility could not.

My head was still spinning as I walked down the hall and saw the list of Barnard alums: Margaret Mead, Joan Rivers, Martha Stewart, AnnaQuindlen, Suzanne Vega, Erica Jong, Jhumpa Lahiri.

Jhumpa Lahiri! I was still trying to discredit the tour guides claim thatwomens colleges produce a disproportionate number of female leadersacross all fields until I got to that name. Shes my favorite writer of all time.

I have no idea whether my daughter will get into Barnard or, if so, choose toattend the school. Ironically, she loved Barnard but is still trying to figureout whether going to an all-womens college will mean giving up the chanceto have close male friends, something that has been important to her highschool experience. I keep telling her that it wont. But I am her dad, so whatI say doesnt really count.

The one thing I took away from our trip was that there is indeed still a place

for a womens college in 2011 America. Barnard is a special place. I onlywish my kindergartener could apply.

Main Image: Columbia University Photo

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Comments

1. Michael says:

March 28, 2011 at 7:30 am

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She might also consider my alma mater, Bennington, which integrated in the 70s but still has alargely female population. Theyre also strong on liberal arts, especially performing arts, but arealso about one discipline informing another.

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2. Eoghan says:

March 28, 2011 at 7:40 am

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There is a significant amount of evidence out there to suggest that sex segregates schools are agood idea. There is no education gap for the boys at all boys schools.

A trend that has emerged in the UK among savvy middle class parents is to their boys to a privateall boys school and send the girls to a local co-ed in order to assure that both get a fair shake of theeducation stick.

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3. Natasha says:

March 28, 2011 at 8:46 am

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Im far more in favor of single sex colleges than I am elementary and high schools. In the lowergrades, or more accurately, during the formative years when we are developing our social andinterpersonal skills, I think we NEED the input and stimulation that the opposite sex can provide. Ican tell my daughter all day long how to interact with a boy, but all that is is a female

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interpretation of how to interact with a boy; it is NOT the same as having the interaction with anactual boy.

However, once you hit college age, presumably most of those experiences have already been had,or at least approximated. Also presumably, people engaged in a college education are going to betaking their studies fairly seriously; hopefully more seriously than they did in high school.

Assuming these two conditions, I think that a single sex college is probably beneficial in thatneither the students nor the profs must be concerned with gender bias within the classroom andcan just get on with the experience of learning/teaching.There are some students who are more concerned with playing sports, earning advanced degreeesin beer die or earning their Mrs. than they are with the actual education attending college willprovide them with. These students will probably not opt for single sex campuses. That is not to saythat I believe all coed college students are not serious about their education, they are, but I dothink you necessarily get a different calibur of student at a single sex institution. I think thesestudents do tend to be more academically focused, more certain of what they want their adultprofessional lives to look like, and are more prone to going on to earn advanced degrees. Notsmarter, just driven differently.

Of course, students who attend single sex schools also tend to be of a certain race, income bracketand gender.so who can say what the key factor is?

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4. Marisa M says:

March 28, 2011 at 11:46 am

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I was accepted at both Mount Holyoke and Smith, but chose Mount Holyoke. And I have neverregretted that decision. I even left for a year, and then went back because I couldnt envisionmyself anywhere else. Single sex education may not be the right choice for everyone, but at thetime, it was the only choice for me.

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5. laura Novak says:

March 28, 2011 at 11:55 am

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Boy, no one made me breakfast at midnight before my exams. But FWIW, my Barnard and my

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Columbia (grad school) diplomas are identical. IDENTICAL. The seal at the bottom represents thecollege under the university umbrella from which you get the diploma. And the dean/president of that college signs it. My Barnard diploma is in Latin, the J school one in English. Otherwise, theyare interchangeable. I also lived on all female floors at Barnard but co-ed floors were above andbelow me. I just didnt want to share a bathroom with guys. The courses are all interchangeableand my russian classes with 7 kids were a mix of Columbia College (all male at the time) and

Barnard. IMHO, it truly is the best of all worlds, though cold as hell when that wind whips up116th street.

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6. Rebecca says:

March 28, 2011 at 11:56 am

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When I was a junior in high school, my parents also took me on an East Coast college tour, and Iwas adamantly against going to an all-womens college until my Mount Holyoke College tour.Not only was the campus beautiful, and dont think that wasnt a big factor, but the rhetoric theyused, while reminiscent of the armys Be all you can be, made me stop and think.

As an athlete (competitive swimmer) and as a girl with a lot of guy friends, I assumed a co-edschool would be the place for me. But my guide made me reconsider when she brought up livingfour years in an environment that focused all of its efforts on ME. I would learn uniquely, I wouldgrow uniquely, I would be supported and encouraged and built up to be the very best version of the woman I could be.

No other school had offered me that.

They had talked about on-campus parking, meal plans, large-and-small class sizes, but none of them had made me think about what that college could do for me as a person. Only MountHolyoke did. And Natasha (re: post above), it also helped that at the time (the numbers have sincegrown) MHC had an 11% international student population, with 13% of MHC students beingwomen of color; numbers that were much higher than your average co-ed institution. I am not awoman of color, but having grown up living in other countries and around the U.S., I wanted astudent community that would reflect the world around me.

In the end, I applied to only 2 colleges. I chose to go to Mount Holyoke, and in my junior year, Ibecame a tour guide so I could help encourage other young women to make the similar choice Imade choose an all womens college, if thats the right choice, for YOU. For the education of you, to grow into being the absolute best, most well-rounded, self-focused (NOT self-centered)woman you can be.

There will always be men around as both potential dates (depending on your sexual orientation)and potential friends all womens colleges are not cloistered nunneries accessible only throughimpenetrable forests or on mountain tops. But take the time to consider that four years in collegemay be the only time an entire institution will be devoted to developing a girl into a woman.

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Oh, and Mr. Matlack? Yes, pillow fights in our pajamas may occasionally happen as well.

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