Smith College

Colleges & Universities Smith College
81

<p>“Semantics. The fact 10,000 was given to the “resource center” an only 800.00 to the Republican club tells you were the priorities are. And I haven’t even touched all the money given to all the other gay organizations, when other organizations had their funds reduced. Read the friggin budget.”</p>

<p>the money for the resource center came primarily from the dean of the college, the money for the republican club came from the SGA budget. this isn’t about the “friggin budget.” it’s about how that budget is built and where that money comes from.</p>

<p>“The student government is Smith.”</p>

<p>no, it’s not. the administration’s policies and language have not changed. nor has the college’s identity as an institution for women. </p>

<p>i’ve probably talked to as many alumnae as you have. as well as at least one former board member. and several significant administrators. </p>

<p>more to the point, i know PLENTY of smith students who are straight and DON’T feel “marginalized” by the non-heterosexual population. i have as much authority on these points as you do, and some of the information you’re sharing is patently incorrect. :)</p>

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<p>-{the money for the resource center came primarily from the dean of the college, the money for the republican club came from the SGA budget. this isn’t about the “friggin budget.” it’s about how that budget is built and where that money comes from]</p>

<p>You’re splitting hairs. SGA budget AND the college budget ok The money comes from college funds. Period. Just because they’re under different names changes nothing. It didn’t deem it necessary to go into the minutia of the distribution or from where the funds were allocated.</p>

<p>[I’ve probably talked to as many alumnae as you have}</p>

<p>I’ve been at it for over 25 years. How old are you?</p>

<p>[as well as at least one former board member}</p>

<p>So? I said I was talking to CURRENT board members.
Just as students have different views so do many board members. I was expressing the sentiments of /some/ board members.</p>

<p>[non-heterosexual }</p>

<p>LOL–What? You can’t say gay or lesbian anymore? Oh yeah, transgender doesn’t fit into those descriptions. My mistake. Sorry…See what I mean about PC out of control?</p>

<p>[i know PLENTY of smith students who are straight and DON’T feel “marginalized” by the non-heterosexual population.]</p>

<p>I’m sure there are. I haven’t taken an actual confidential poll. I suppose that would be interesting though. I’d love to see what students say when they not afraid of being PC in personal conversations with other students because of the <em>flack</em> they receive should they, by god, say the wrong thing.</p>

<p>There is no point in arguing. You have your views and I have mine. However, we both agree Smith offers a great education.</p>

83

<p>First of all, I think everyone here has shared their own experiences of Smith. Roadlesstraveled is married to a Smith alumna, so I dont think you can say outright that he’s wrong, and my experiences are my experiences at Smith as well. I don’t think we make up these kinds of stories for kicks.</p>

<p>Now onto things concerning the budget. If the DEAN of the college gave the LBGT group this money and it DIDn’t come from the SGA budget…well, then the college is making a statement here–this wasnt voted by the students, it was a college priority, and thats a hell of statement to make. It most definitely shows the direction in which you are taking your institution.</p>

<p>Secondly, concerning the SGA budget, the republican group (sadly) only gets this small amount of money that pales in comparison to other groups with more liberal or sexually oriented goals because of the people that run things. Lets face it–most of the students that run things tend to be liberal and from what I have heardthe way SGA breaks up money around campus isn’t really in equal shares. But I am no expert, so please don’t post complaining about what I’m saying. </p>

<p>Finally, going back to the gay issue. People say that we’re perpetuating stereotypes by talking about gays at Smith. The fact is they are there. Many people go to Smith and Smith shoves down your throat (esp in orientation) that we have to accept everyone for who they are–all fine and well. So girls tend to ignore the lesbian population or not say that it bothers them, or not make any comment at all becasue god forbid we offend someone. Alot of firsties are thrown into Smith and just start realizing the fact that there are lesbians, so they experiment with it. Girls miss physical touch, so they experiment with it.</p>

<p>My advice if you go to Smith:
Don’t become so open minded that your brain falls out.</p>

84

<p>If the DEAN of the college gave the LBGT group this money and it Didn’t come from the SGA budget…well, then the college is making a statement here–this wasn’t voted by the students, it was a college priority, and thats a hell of statement to make. It most definitely shows the direction in which you are taking your institution]</p>

<p>You stated my premise much more succinctly. Thanks Sara.</p>

<p>[Don’t become so open minded that your brain falls out]</p>

<p>LOL-- I really do wish you the greatest success. You’re wise beyond your years.</p>

85

<p>What’s the deal? There are lesbian students at Smith. They are marginalized elsewhere, and feel the opportunity to let it out at Smith? So? Yale has the largest, best-funded, and most famous Gay Studies program in the United States, and attracts huge numbers of gay male students (to the point that women are complaining.) They run massive naked parties. The percentage of gay males in the general population is 5-6X the percentage of lesbians. I seriously doubt that the percentage of lesbian students at Smith is higher than that of gay men at Yale. But who counts?</p>

<p>And so? You can choose to attend a college with a large openly lesbian population, or a LAC like my alma mater, where well over 55% of the male students binge drink on a regular basis, 30% drink 10 or more drinks per week, and feces on the walls and in the sinks are regularly reported in the college newspaper. (The numbers are similar at virtually all the co-ed northeastern rural LACs.) </p>

<p>As far as I know, my d. is straight. I wouldn’t mind in the least if she wasn’t. Her academic work and her STRIDE position has her regularly visiting 3 of the 4 other consortia campuses. She runs into plenty of men, and can socialize with them if she chooses. She chose Smith after spending a midweek night at my coed alma mater (where she was recruited), where the students started drinking before dinner, and didn’t stop (this year, a recruited high school senior was rushed to the emergency room with alcohol levels so high, it could have killed him.) </p>

<p>I guess from where I sit, if that’s the current expectation of what a college is supposed to be like, I’m glad my d. chose as she did.</p>

<p>I think the real issue at Smith is that it is all women, and the idea of powerful, intellectual exciting women with all those resources directed at them is a threatening idea. And it works. My alma mater (the #1 LAC) has been coed now for 35 years - I can’t name a single well-known female alumna from there. No members of Congress, and none from virtually any of the other coed LACs either. Try economists - heads of the Council of Economic Advisors. Find me a female Harvard grad. A female Yale grad. If you look down the Fulbright lists coming out of Amherst, Williams, Swarthmore, Bowdoin, etc., you find almost no women. If you look for females in the Fortune 500, you find lots of women’s college grads…and virtually none from the well-known LACs. Try authors, playwrights…actually you can try virtually any category you like: you take the grads of the four remaining all-female Seven Sisters schools, and apparently they must be doing something right, whether they were straight, lesbian, LUGs, or questioning.</p>

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<p>[What’s the deal? There are lesbian students at Smith. They are marginalized elsewhere, and feel the opportunity to let it out at Smith? So? Yale has the largest, best-funded, and most famous Gay Studies program in the United States, and attracts huge numbers of gay male students (to the point that women are complaining.) They run massive naked parties. The percentage of gay males in the general population is 5-6X the percentage of lesbians. I seriously doubt that the percentage of lesbian students at Smith is higher than that of gay men at Yale. But who countss]</p>

<p>With all do respect, we’re talking about the issues at Smith. I really don’t give a damn about the gay males at Yale, anymore than I care about what transpires in Provincetown.
Nor do I care Hamilton has a streaking team. </p>

<p>{where well over 55% of the male students binge drink on a regular basis, 30% drink 10 or more drinks per week, and feces on the walls and in the sinks are regularly reported in the college newspaper. (The numbers are similar at virtually all the co-ed northeastern rural LACs.)}</p>

<p>Again, what does drinking at any LAC have to do with the issue? And drinking doesn’t take a substantial amount of funds from the college coffers, as we’re discussing.</p>

<p>{I think the real issue at Smith is that it is all women, and the idea of powerful, intellectual exciting women with all those resources directed at them is a threatening idea}</p>

<p>Threatening to whom? I married one and many of my best friends are Smith alumna. They also found husbands who weren’t threatened. Many men appreciate the Smith intelligence and strong-mindedness, etc. Many MEN donate to Smith. Me included. </p>

<p>{If you look for females in the Fortune 500, you find lots of women’s college grads…and virtually none from the well-known LACs}</p>

<p>No one was arguing the quality of the education. The Ivies etc. have only been coed for 30 yrs. Hardly enough time to have graduated enough women to make a substantial impact over Smith when Smith has been at it for 125+ years.
This argument is pointless. There are many of us who have been affiliated with Smith over generations and aren’t exactly thrilled with the allocation of OUR money.
Legitimate difference of opinions on both sides. All is good. Happy holidays</p>

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<p>You forgot one. The women at Vassar ***** because they claim there are no straight men to date. Opps :)</p>

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<p>RLT, you’re right…my frat would have been GDI. But you touch upon a point that is very salient in lots of areas: reptuation vs. reality. It takes some work to tease out the distinction and, on the questions that matter to me, I’d like to think my batting average is better than .800.</p>

<p>PF, “small, nice, and reasonably priced for NYC.” Ah…the third point is totally irrelevant. You may think they’re small, nice…I’d say they’re dingy and cramped. I know what I’m comparing them to…what are <em>you</em> comparing them to?</p>

<p>

And this is more salient, imo, than all the tempest in a teapot about how who views whom’s anatomy. Smith/Wellesley/Barnard/Bryn Mawr are doing <em>something</em> very right. I wouldn’t have thought that my D would go to a womens college but I’m now very glad she did. Of the four, she applied and was accepted to three…Smith happened to be the best fit for <em>her</em> and given another student with different criteria, the decision could very well have been different. But there is something tremendous going on at the schools.</p>

<p>I’m not flush at the moment but I think I’ll wager a C-note that Smith doesn’t go co-ed anytime in the next 25 years.</p>

<p>BJM8, regarding Bio, I don’t know a lot, but it was one of the majors my D considered…probably her #5 choice…and I do seem to recall that Smith has one of the leading academics in DNA sequencing on the Bio staff. Also, they’re pouring a <em>ton</em> of money into the sciences: facilities, faculty, aid to entice science students. I suspect your D would have a ton of research opportunities, STRIDE or no.</p>

<p>I think some of the apparent conflict between Mini & RLT is more apparent than real but then I’m used to Mini’s posting style and hot buttons. :slight_smile: </p>

<p>Fwiw, RLT, I think Mini’s point about binge drinking stats has some real relevance to the Smith experience because, while there is some binge drinking, it’s a lot less than many other schools and I think it’s low enough below some threshhold that both the social and academic environment are improved by it.</p>

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<p>I’m comparing them (plural, the many multiple dorm rooms and res. halls I’ve seen or lived in on campus) to the very nice apartment I had in Tampa, dorms and apartments at various other colleges I’ve visited friends at, and dorms here at graduate school. Do you think I’ve really never seen housing outside of Barnard’s dorm rooms?</p>

<p>Edit: And the point to the “irrelevant” third part was to correct your misstatement of the points people raise about Barnard dorms- that people don’t say “they’re crap, but it’s NYC,” but, “you can’t get big rooms affordably in NYC.” Note that no one said they are somehow better than Smith’s dorms, no need to worry. Just that they’re not “dank, cramped pits.” And naturally, you can say whatever you want about what you think of the dorms. That’s not why I posted in the first place. But you shouldn’t claim that other people say things they don’t.</p>

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<p>You had me worried there for a minute, Mini–when I read that the Fulbright lists from Swarthmore include nearly no women. So I checked their archives. One year, yes, three guys won. But all the other years include women. Obviously a lower percentage of Fulbrights at Swarthmore are won by women than at an all-women’s college, but I wouldn’t say that that translates to “nearly no women.”</p>

<p>Don’t get me wrong–I would have been perfectly happy for my daughter to attend an all women’s college and, in fact, did what I could to get them on her radar and she did have at least two of them on her final college list, including my own all women’s alma mater. But I didn’t want to think that Swarthmore somehow had a glass ceiling on women getting Fulbrights, and I don’t think they do.</p>

91

<p>Not to interupt your discussion…but…</p>

<p>About grad school. Do most or the majority of smith students go to grad school? would you say they have a better chance of getting in because of their smith education? anyone have experiences with this?</p>

92

<p>“Again, what does drinking at any LAC have to do with the issue? And drinking doesn’t take a substantial amount of funds from the college coffers, as we’re discussing.”</p>

<p>Are you kidding? If you look at my alma mater has been doing to transform its residential system because, among other reasons, the current one is seen conducive to dangerous behavior (and which caused them to close their overnight health system because no doctor would accept liability), the college is paying out, literally, millions. What they just paid their most recent alcohol consultant alone is many times the cost of the LGBT center. Would you be pleased about the allocation of “your” money? (I know I would be - the lifestyle issues, and make no mistake - that’s what they are, are harrowing.)</p>

<p>"Obviously a lower percentage of Fulbrights at Swarthmore are won by women than at an all-women’s college, but I wouldn’t say that that translates to “nearly no women.”</p>

<p>What I was saying is more than that. As a percentage of WOMEN on the AWS campuses, the percentage of female winners is a small fraction of what you find at the Seven Sister schools. (Swarthmore being the highest by some distance, but still low.) It certainly isn’t a result of the “quality” of the students. It has to be because of something the colleges are doing once they get there (unless you want to chalk it up to the “lesbian culture”?)</p>

<p>“The Ivies etc. have only been coed for 30 yrs.”</p>

<p>For my alma mater it’s over 35. Almost all the folks I’m referring to are UNDER 55 years old. (If it’s at all of interest to you, check the list of female Congresspeople if you like - check the 20% from women’s colleges,. and then take a look at how old they are. Virtually all of them “could” have graduated from a coed Ivy of LAC; for whatever reason, they didn’t.)</p>

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<p>Supercow, I would assume that Smith graduates get into grad. school at a very high rate. All elite LAC’s have a high grad school attendance, but that is why they are who they are, and why alot of students want to get into them! I do know that they have one of the highest percentage of women who are accepted to med. schools throughout the country. Approximately 30% of Smith students are majoring in biology, and I’m sure that translates into higher grad school acceptances.</p>

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<p>Yeah lots of women who have graduated from smith that I know are going on to Grad school. But the school alone isn’t going to whisk you into grad school, you have to work for it. So, it doesnt really matter what top LAC you choose because theyll all give you the tools, you just have to build with them.</p>

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<p>Yeah, nothing replaces lots of hard work…and after reading TheDad’s comments about the work his D had to do building up to exams, I know that Smith can kind of pile it on. All part of building character, I guess. We all went through it. I think, from what I’ve read, that there is definitely a balance that girls must find while attending this wonderful school. Some girls just take weekends, or parts of them, to have fun with friends and enjoy themselves.</p>

96

<p>Chibaufry, what a firestorm you started with your innocent request for anything people could tell you about Smith!</p>

<p>Here’s an interesting sidelight that occurred to me last night as I was watching a rerun of a Law & Order episode revolving around a transgender character (who was born with male equipment but had the mind or psyche of a woman). Some time ago my husband told me that the company where he works (he’s an engineer at one of the big defense contractors) had just announced that one of the women’s bathrooms would be designated as a bathroom for transgender employees (of which there is at least one at the company). This is happening in a business whose bread is certainly buttered more by conservatives than by liberals, and among a population that tends to be pretty conventional in its (their?) lifestyles and outlooks. At the lower levels of engineers there, the ratio of men to women is close to 50/50, but at the top it is still largely male. So if this company, so seemingly deep within the mainstream, has made such a public effort to embrace people of different gender orientations, then Smith may not be quite so radical in its PCness as some of the discussion here would make it out to be. My husband also says there is an active GBLT group at the company, who post notices about meetings and activities prominently outside the cafeteria, the kind of thing one expects on a high school or college campus, but not in the defense industry. Perhaps the perceived excessiveness of Smith’s devotion of resources to BLT activities (I don’t think that could possibly be the right acronym!) is the only way to achieve a trickle-down of increased respect and tolerance beyond the ivory tower.</p>

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<p>SuperCow, I think you can find that grad/professional school stats somewhere on the Smith website but Smithies do very well in admissions to both. </p>

<p>I forgot when I got home last night to follow up on that very open fourth paragraph of one of your previous posts: Smith is very aggressive at taking applicants from lower economic circumstances (as measured by Pell Grants…quick, stop Mini before he goes off on this!) and first-in-family-to-college applicants, roughly a quarter of the school falls into each category, with some overlap, obviously. These students are less likely to have the resources and thus the stats/grades that other students do, which pulls down Smith’s SAT’s, etc., but says nothing of the quality of the women they admit. Smith is looking for women who can succeed at Smith and looking in a more holistic way beyond strictly GPA/scores, though those are not ignored. From that fourth paragraph (the one about your family background), I think you’re exactly the type of young woman that Smith is expecting will bloom in their environment.</p>

<p>Pesto, I think the OP is getting her money’s worth…there are <em>lots</em> of thoughts about Smith in this thread.</p>

<p>BJM8, I don’t think the Smith workload is quite to the “test to destruction” point that it might be at a couple of schools. As it turns out, D has only one real final during finals week but has to turn in two major papers that were assigned weeks ago. She’s done all the reading/research, but the writing isn’t trivial (and neither were the topics). She just called with a question about Christmas shopping and said that she was up until 4am.</p>

<p>PF, I was just curious. And people have in fact said both those quotes about Barnard dorms to me. What…you think my sole input about Barnard is from CC? Tsk. The second quote was, in fact, from our Barnard tour guide. The first was from a local student who attends Barnard. Fwiw, of all the colleges we visited, Barnard’s were among the bottom 2-3. It’s good that you’re satisfied with what you can’t change.</p>

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<p>Good to know. Im glad that Smith looks at the WHOLE applicant rather than just SAT scores, as im sure thats why I was accepted. Id much rather go to a school like that than one that uses me application as a coaster because of a few numbers. </p>

<p>I must admit that im a little intimidated by the smith course load. Do Smith students have ANY time to do anything?</p>

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<p>SC, even carrying 18 units…first year D took 20 each semester, D has time for three EC’s. Or makes time. Plus socializing. I’d guess that she parties less than most students but it’s not as if she’s living in St. Mary’s convent…she socializes both inside her house and out. Her two music EC’s also include time-consuming rehearsals…the performances are, in general, a piece of cake in comparison. She was sorry that her rehearsal schedule conflicted with performances of Tom Stoppard’s “Arcadia” last Spring as finals approached and a Green Day concert was sold out way before she could give attention to it. I don’t think that most Smithies take 20 units consistently. </p>

<p>PF, I take it back, it wasn’t a local girl who said “it’s crap but it’s NYC” but I can’t remember who it was, only that the opinion aligned with mine. I hate it that my memory is such that I can nail an obscure quote by Andre Maurois but forget precisely what TheMom told me on Thursday.</p>

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<p>[So if this company, so seemingly deep within the mainstream, has made such a public effort to embrace people of different gender orientations,]</p>

<p>There was nothing altruistic about the decision. HR and the legal dept. advised them to for fear of a lawsuit. Been there. God bless attorneys with their sexual harassment and discrimination suits.</p>