<p>I will definitely ditto SDonCC’s comments. I didn’t attend an LAC, but I did graduate from a private university in the Northeast and I’m a native of the region. As a person of color, I hated the region. I especially hated it after going to graduate school in the Midwest and discovering a different level of civility and even acceptance of diversity. There was just lot less snobbery, I guess, than I experienced growing up on the East Coast. Different regional cultures. Still, my kids have gone to high school in the Northeast and naturally first considered colleges in this region. My sister’s old high school boyfriend had gone to Bowdoin, so I recommended it to my D2. After seeing that video, I’m glad she didn’t listen to my recommendation. </p>
<p>But once she visited the LACs in the Midwest (where she was born and lived till high school age), schools like Carleton, Oberlin, and Grinnell, the East Coast LACs didn’t have a chance. She picked Oberlin mainly because it was closest to home but was still solidly midwest. But all three top midwest LACs were vastly preferable to the NESCAC schools.</p>
<p>The most chilling thing for me about that Bowdoin YouTube video wasn’t the black students, although that was extremely unsettling, it was the college president. He seemed almost cavalier about the existence of prejudice and class-based ostracism on campus. He turned me off completely. He had no sense of urgency or passionate concern. He might as well have said “hey, it happens. Be patient. Times change. Eventually.”</p>
<p>Please don’t take this as an attack on the quality of a Bowdoin education. A Bowdoin education is among the best in the world. I’m talking specifically about campus culture, about tolerance, diversity, actively seeking and embracing differences because you believe in it, rather than to just check a box. The best Midwest LACs feel like the former, while the best in the Northeast, with the possible exception of Wesleyan, feel more like the latter. That’s my opinion.</p>