I am the product of a women's college. It was an accident, essentially. I wanted to study a major, archaeology, that was really only available at one university, so that was where I went. It was small, which made me happy, smaller than my high school. And I got to know pretty much everyone in my class, and probably more than anything else I learned there, I learned to be a friend with other women. All my closest friends in high school were guys, but women were something new, and I thrived in that environment.
I am who I am because of the place I went to college, where I developed into a relatively confident scholar, if perhaps never getting rid of a deep insecurity in my social life. But I like what I became and I owe it to my undergraduate experience.
That is why the news today has hit me so hard. Sweet Briar College, a small liberal arts women's college in rural Virginia is closing.
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Sweet Briar was founded in 1901, so it is just over 100 years old. The class of 2015 is going to be their last class, and they will offer summer classes until the college shuts its doors in late August. The Board of Directors voted the closing on Saturday, as their endowment was not big enough to continue to provide the discount rate populating their classes would require (the discount rate is what the college takes off the tuition to encourage a student to come to the institution; most colleges provide discounts to a significant percentage of their attendees). The current enrollment was under 600 degree-seeking students, including nine graduate students. They had 328 staff, including faculty, one of whom is a former student of mine who had just been hired into a tenure-track job. That new college professor is in shock and not ready to go back out on the academic job market, having settled into what, for her, was the perfect place.
Sweet Briar still has an endowment of 94 million dollars and a campus of 3200 acres of prime Virginia land near Lynchburg (this is truly a beautiful part of the country). The campus itself is beautiful as well; they just finished a major renovation of their library. They are working to provide smooth transitions for their students to other colleges in the area, and I hope they will be as considerate of their staff when the time comes.
This came out of the blue, but probably not completely to the people there. I am sure they felt, like me, that things could not go that badly. A lot of colleges close for just these reasons. Usually they are not ones I have ever heard of, though. Sweet Briar was one of those "other" women's colleges, one that had a reputation of being a bit finishing-school-ish (probably because it was horse-happy), a bit too southern for my taste, but still a place one could get a killer education. It was ranked among the national liberal arts colleges in U.S. News, tied for 116th.
And now they are closing. I am very saddened by this. There is still a place for a women's college. Hillary Clinton is a graduate of one, as are lawyers and artists, filmmakers and journalists, physicists and anthropologists, doctors and women whose successes are counted in a thousand different ways, including in their families and communities.
I have never visited Sweet Briar College, and yet I will miss knowing they are there.
Farewell, my sister.