<p>Actually, I was a Fed staff writer for a while. It’s called “joking.” The EIC last year was a Barnard student. There are many Barnard students on the Fed staff, and a few in the marching band, too. Personally, though, I hate Orgo night because they’re blasting loud music on the quad late at night before finals.</p>
<p>When did I somehow imply Barnard “wasn’t sensitive” (though I don’t think it is egregiously so)? Students at Columbia have protested the marching band’s racist jokes, so why can’t students at Barnard protest their sexist jokes? I think both protests are silly, but what on earth does that have to do with the quality of Barnard’s education? For that matter, what does how hard it is to get into one school over another have to do with it? Again, the fact is that Barnard students do just as well as Columbia students in the same classes, so any difference in the admissions difficulty doesn’t have much significance in terms of academic ability. But most people generally accept that. How many students are rejected from Harvard for lack of being president of something in high school or missing a few more questions on a standardized test?</p>
<p>I would definitely disagree that the top LACs can measure up to research U’s in the criteria you seem to value. Also, I never claimed Barnard was as <em>prestigious</em> as Amherst or other top LACs, I just noted that prestige doesn’t make an education any less thorough. And as a rank of “quality,” US News rankings are not far from perfect–they’re pretty terrible. Would you say Barnard provides a worse education than, say, Vassar? Colby? Is Colorado College that much better than Skidmore?</p>
<p>Seriously, what is your obsession with prestige?</p>