Questions, Intuitions, Revisions: Telling and Re-Telling Stories About Ourselves in the World A College Seminar Course at Bryn Mawr College

"If I had had more time, I'd have written you a shorter letter."

Works Cited
Horowitz, Helen. Alma Mater: Design and Experience in the Women’s Colleges from Their Nineteenth-Century Beginnings to the 1930s. New York: Knopf, 1984. 105-133.
Heller, Rita Rubinstein. “An ‘Unnatural’ Institution.” “The Women of Summer” The Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers, 1921-1938.” Dss. Rutgers University, 1986. 1-36.

As I drove past the campus for the third time, I said to my self, "Where in the world is the blasted place?" Oblivious to the panic I created within her, I pulled along side an unobtrusive jogger. The health fanatic was perfectly content to not be harassed by a lunatic ready to plunge to her death from a moving car window. "Excuse me, please," I shouted. She kept jogging. The wind worked my hair into a lunatic frenzy. I swerved the car to miss an innocent squirrel. What was he doing on the grass, anyway?
Thinking the hapless jogger did not hear me, I screamed my plea even louder this time. "Excuse me, please."
Surely the jogger had a hearing impairment of some sort, as she never strayed from her path of health and exercise to assist a person in obvious great need. And then it hit me. The tree branch, right in the face. That is what happens when you perch precariously from a car window. My guttural howl of pain, it could be called nothing less, did grab the attention of the jogger, or perhaps it was the two ton vehicle careening wildly out of control as I released my hold on the steering wheel to hold my injured face. Nonetheless, the spandex clad woman was now willing to assist. Imagine to my innocent surprise when I realized the woman was not hearing-impaired. She was just ignoring me.
While I had the full attention of the jogger, and every person in a two-block radius, I quickly asked for directions to Bryn Mawr College. Delighted, yet slightly bruised, I quickly made an illegal u-turn towards my future lest I forget the vital information just imparted to me. As I blazed a path in the grass, the jogger's final words echoed in my ears. The words will stay with me always, "They will let anybody into that school."
Finally finding the beautiful campus nestled into a quaint nook, I alighted from my car with feelings of overwhelming joy and happiness. The lush green grass made me thankful I was not a member of the grounds keeping staff. The volume of trees presented a safe haven to the overwhelming number of visible squirrels. I had not previously realized that the squirrel was an endangered species and was protected by Bryn Mawr Public Safety.
The architecture of the Bryn Mawr campus was majestic, except for one building oddly thrown into the mix. Obviously aliens had landed at Bryn Mawr and left Erdman as a reminder of their visit. The landscape was awe-inspiring.
The castles and turrets transported me back in time. I was able to imagine myself as a fairy princess about to slay the evil dragon. My weapon was education; my dragon was the outside world.
Bryn Mawr does that. It affords you the weapons needed to fulfill your dreams.
It has and continues to offer women their rightful place in this world. The original dream of Bryn Mawr was to provide a school for women equal to that of Harvard and Yale. At least, that was M. Carey Thomas' dream. Being herself denied the opportunity to achieve a Ph.D. in the United States, she was forced to obtain her doctorate in Zurich. This alienation by colleges, coupled with Thomas' unquenchable thirst for knowledge, compelled her to insure the resource of Bryn Mawr College.
Thomas required students to pass entrance exams, to study Greek and Latin, and to build the body with physical education requirements. This was not a finishing school. Ladies did not swoon at the sight of bared ankles, rather the female students brazenly created havoc with their nude swimming.
Bryn Mawr can not be defined. How do you define an enigma? The school is constructed of complexities. The school is filled with diversity, yet the statistics reveal a mostly Caucasian population. The school encourages self-expression, yet being heterosexual is looked upon as limiting. The school nurtures expansion of the mind, yet I can not attend my classes, as the campus is not handicap accessible.
The history of Bryn Mawr is nowhere near completion. It is being written and rewritten everyday and I, for one, look forward to being a part of that story.

After viewing the film, The Women of Summer, someone in the group wondered if Bryn Mawr College was proud of that part of their history. The fact that the Program was discontinued, and most of us had never heard about it, seemed to indicate a certain amount of shame associated with the Summer School.

Personally, I was struck by the similarities between the 1921-38 program for women workers and the current McBride Scholars Program. Approximately fifty years after the Summer Program closed, Bryn Mawr again began offering opportunities to women who might not otherwise have a first-rate liberal arts education available to them.

The trade workers of the Summer Program were selected based on their social standing and trade work. (The College went so far as to exclude teachers, clerical workers and saleswomen from the Program.) In 1923, the School revised its Statement of Purpose.

The aim of the School is to offer young
women in industry opportunities to study
liberal subjects and to train themselves
in clear thinking; to stimulate an active
and continued interest in the problems of
our economic order; to develop a desire to
study as a means of understanding and of
enjoyment of life.

The Summer School looked for blue-collar women
eager for challenging collegiate study. They sought
women of promise wishing to better their lot.
Recruiters sought evidence of maturity, leadership
potential and mainly of intellectual curiosity.

Today, McBrides are selected based on age rather than social class. One of the McBride Program’s criterion is that the women must be “beyond the traditional college age.” Otherwise, the McBride recruitment literature of today is remarkably similar to that of the Summer School’s requirements.

Today’s McBride Program looks for “women who have an
intense motivation and desire to advance their knowledge
in an academic community that recognizes their
unique contributions and challenges.”

The McBride Program recognizes the myriad of reasons
women postponed or interrupted their schooling for
family, work, financial hardship, or to pursue
other interests. They further recognize that some
women never considered going to college because they
didn’t realize they were smart.

The majority of McBride Scholars I’ve come to know aren’t daughters of Industry leaders, but they are intelligent women who’ve been held back for one reason or another from achieving their intellectual potential. They’ve sacrificed their goals and desires for others and continue to make sacrifices in order to pursue their dream of an education. Some are interested in initiating bold changes in national politics or within their community, while others are starting more tentatively with a quieter revolution from within.

The Summer School women and the McBrides have at least one commonality: courage.

Perhaps another paper…

Another fascinating aspect of the film intrigues me. Bryn Mawr alumnae were known to be offspring of wealthy families. Their fathers were generally capitalistic affluent businessmen. Yet this Summer School sought to educate the very workers in their factories – leading to unionism – which meant higher wages, less work hours, better working conditions, etc. I’m perplexed – was Bryn Mawr College (M. Carey Thomas) deliberately baiting the parents of the student body when it sought to educate these women in labor issues and collective bargaining?

Normally, someone encountering these stories might get a stronger sense of the nostalgia of the history, but the direct testimony of the women's hardships in the workplace and of their union activism doesn't allow us a comfortable distance from the past. This story, it seems, is being shared as a reminder that even today there's radical action waiting to be taken. This challenge from the past is jarring. After all, the possibility that we, today's Bryn Mawr undergraduates, will heed it is very unlikely. The problems we face as women, as workers, as members of any particular group are not as harsh. We do not have a compelling need to mobilize ourselves into collective action. However, the story of radical ideas and actions related to Bryn Mawr's history tells us that progress is made through struggle, and it forces us to consider what we owe to that struggle.

On a completely different track...

I have the sense there are plenty of smart young women from working-class families at Bryn Mawr now and, to the credit of our American society, this seems unremarkable. On the other hand, I do wonder if Carey Thomas' vision of an academically rigorous institution remains the same as what she intended. There is certainly a lot of work demanded here, but perhaps quantity gets in the way of quality?

College Seminar
Fall 2001
Meg Devereux

What a vision Carey Thomas had. And what grit to push her ideas through her enlightened but nonetheless all male conservative board. Her decisions to take the best that Smith, Vassar, and Wellesley had to offer and combine it with her own vision intrigues me. That she wanted the women in her college to govern themselves and not be chaperoned as in a female seminary combines a lack of condescension and a surplus of trust that must have been empowering in a an almost revolutionary way. Like many visionary pioneers she combined new and energetic plans with what sometimes seems a number of inconsistencies and contradictions. As with any single minded visionary she could appear arrogant and intractable. Yet she was flexible enough not to judge the nude swimming of her undergraduates and forbade it only under pressure from her board. Her critics probably borrowed a line from her contemporary, Queen Victoria, "We are not amused."
During her early years at Bryn Mawr, Thomas was careful to pay lip service to the Quaker philosophy of her youth and her male board. Quakers believe in a life lived in simplicity, with lack of decoration or extravagance, They "thee" each other as a sign of their lack of worldly deference to one another. All people are equal before God and therefore no clergy or persons of authority are needed in Quaker worship or meeting as they call their services of silent prayer focused on the light within each of them. Quaker women are viewed as fully equal to men. Thomas felt less judged than equal in her pursuit of a higher degree and more than equal in attaining one. No wonder in later years she became Episcopalian as so many of her fellow Quakers of the period did. Episcopalians are not known for their modesty or humility. The Quakers who returned to this their earlier faith of Anglicism, the English parent of the Episcopal faith, appeared at times to do so to enjoy the prosperity and opulence of the late 19th century. The Quakers had come to Pennsylvania "to do good" and had, as the saying goes, "done well". With her love of theatre and music, Thomas would have enjoyed both these elements inherent in the Episcopal liturgy which closely resembles that of Roman Catholicism. Thomas, as did the Episcopalians, enjoyed elegant entertainment, expensive travel, fine houses and collecting objets d'art on trips abroad. Thomas's affection for her cosmopolitan Quaker cousins further demonstrates her comfort with a world beyond her religious roots. Two cousins, married respectively to Bernard Berenson, the art historian and dealer, and Bertrand Russell, the mathematician and philosopher, and their brother Logan Pearsall Smith were among her intimates. The cosmopolitan, less than constant marriages of these women, were a bit off the mark in terms of Quaker "lady hood" referred to by the early board of Bryn Mawr as desirable qualities in the new college before the full directive influence of Thomas was felt.
An ardent feminist, who felt women deserved the same intellectual privileges of the day as men, Thomas eschewed the cottage housing of Smith and Wellesley in favor of a more masculine prototype. Thomas had no say in the first buildings on campus including Taylor named for Bryn Mawr's founder and benefactor. Taylor created a strong vertical presence rising out of an almost unplanted bare landscape. Masculine is hardly a strong enough word for it though the all male board thought of it in its plain demeanor as a gray Quaker Lady on the hill removed from worldliness and signifying spirit and intellect. Thomas, in turn, chose to imitate the colleges of Oxford in exterior architecture, architecture derived directly from mediaeval Roman Catholic monasticism and later all male Anglican academia. Oxford was also suggested in the interior lay out, giving each woman a room or rooms of her own. Unlike students attending other women's college, Bryn Mawr women were not expected to tend to personal housekeeping and were provided with servants, not a particularly Quaker attitude to say the least.
Despite her own hard won academic credentials acquired in Europe or perhaps because of the struggles they entailed, she was loathe to hire women as professors, feeling them to be less qualified academically, less dynamic and unreliable due to marital propensities. She determined early on to employ male professors of first-rate intellect and accomplishment. Bryn Mawr unlike other early women's colleges was situated near a major city that offered intellectual, scientific, cultural and industrial worlds, which provided rich resources for research and intellectual interaction and stimulation for her faculty. Male faculty would be drawn to such a stimulating environment and Thomas utilized this asset to the fullest.
A lover of the arts, Thomas was nonetheless anxious that Bryn Mawr emphasize a traditional male curriculum emphasizing the classic languages, Greek and Latin, and the sciences. Entrance exams were based on stringent male models. The demands of this program were more conservative than other woman's colleges. Nonetheless Thomas moved into new territory. Unlike other women's colleges, Bryn Mawr offered graduate degrees from its early days. Thomas introduced and promoted a highly innovative Graduate School of Education and an equally innovative and controversial Graduate School of Social Science. The later was in constant need of Thomas's protection from her conservative board. Her summer school for women workers was yet another radical program which honored the Quaker classless vision of her youth.
Carey Thomas, Quaker, Episcopalian, feminist, employer of male faculty, builder of monastic edifices, classicist and educational innovator had the diversity of vision and the energy for execution to create a flexible disciplined evolving institution that continues today to embrace and expand complementary and contradictory wholeness. Today women from many races, religions, and economic strata and of varying ages are benefiting from Thomas's early leadership. Bryn Mawr still honors that breadth of vision that F. Scott Fitzgerald cites as the mark of a sophisticated person, an ability to hold multiple and contradictory ideas in the mind at the same time.
As I read the early history of Bryn Mawr, I identified with the summer school students. As a McBride, I am grateful and excited to be here where every bit of learned information seems to jump at me as iron shavings to a magnet. I have a bit of trouble sorting them out and I wouldn't mind a few less at a time but I'm greedy enough to hope I can gather as many as I can for as long as I can and sort them out in my dotage.
Reading these pieces reminds me of at least two women who were here in the 20's and 30's. One was my high school history teacher whom I wrote of briefly in my fairy tale and the earlier assignment on my life of learning. She charmed me, shocked me, pushed me, mothered me and taught me more than any other teacher in a school known for its teaching. The other was a neighbor who died last month at the age of ninety. Widowed at twenty, with two small children she returned to Bryn Mawr and completed her degree. I heard this for the first time ten days ago at her memorial service. I have read her two racy acerbic novels that expose the world of proper Philadelphia, listened to her tell witty self deprecating stories about her life, had her tell me I was full of crap (really her words), and heard others speak of her incredible and quiet generosity of spirit and purse. Both these women had little patience for anything less than an honest, straightforward effort of mind and spirit. Both exemplified moral and intellectual integrity. Both reveled in learning and teaching. Both stood out in their worlds as a little more alive than those around them. Both were a hoot. Well done, Carey Thomas.

Reading about the history of Bryn Mawr College is difficult, not because of its complexity, but because the writing is overrun by status-related information and a lopsided perspective. The story is told primarily from the point of view of the wealthy and powerful founders and administrators. Certainly their influence in shaping the college is depressingly large. However, in my short experience of one semester at the college, the students, a magnificent array of intellectually talented women, they, not the buildings are the intellectual and holy face looking down from the beautiful site upon the surrounding world saying "I might, I might just be able to make a difference." They are one of the most compelling reasons to attend Bryn Mawr. Only in the story of The Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers do we begin to see how the students contributed to the character of the college.

The school was conceived in the mind of a conservative Quaker, a rich man with connections to other rich men with connections to Havorford College. He wondered where Quaker women could get educated. He formed a vision of a female Haverford and with the help of his friends he laid the foundation financially and philosophically for a Quaker college for women.

When he died just before the school became a reality, his daughter took over. But she was quite a different woman than the orthodox Quaker woman her father imagined. As a women with a Ph.D. in 1883 and the hubris to suggest herself for the presidency of the new college she was radical. She went on to rule the school for nearly four decades. What is considered outrageous behavior for the times is amusing to read about in our impious age. Apparently, it was the height of flamboyant disregard for Quaker philosophy to allow music and theatre in the school. I couldn’t help but feel a comraderie with her when she made her aesthetism and pageantry permeate Bryn Mawr College.

Unfortunately, my admiration of her was spoiled when I saw the documentary film about the Bryn Mawr Summer School of Women Workers. Although she helped to found the socially progressive school, she made sure that African American students would not be treated as equals with the rest of the students. This is a disturbing part of Bryn Mawr’s history. Still, the school indirectly contributed to radical social reform by educating industrial workers and promoting social activism.

After discovering that the Bryn Mawr’s leadership of Bryn Mawr was once a forerunner of progressive education I wondered at what point in history did the school fall behind progressive education. Bryn Mawr College intended to be progressive and it was--in its beginning. But is it now? What would be progressive now? I once searched for a progressive school and I never came across Bryn Mawr. Instead, I found schools that shared an alternative approach to the following set of characteristics:

PROGRESSIVE IDEAS IN EDUCATION: (rough draft)
Child Care
Where students with children are accomodated with childcare facilities and a general attitude of tolerance for the parent’s unpredictable needs (for instance at UCF they allowed cell phones, and if a student mother had to leave class in the middle of a test to attend to her child it was done.) It is astonishing that any school associated with the notion of feminism would not have on-campus child care. Also, what about the needs of the young mother. If she is required by a totally outdated idea of requiring all students to live on campus, forgo having a car, and be full-time this practically excludes young mothers. What should they do? Wait until they are old enough to be a McBride? ...which leads me to the next thing:

Age Discrimination.
The very stodgey requirement that students attend full time is an exclusionary mechanism in two ways: it keeps those who would have to work to pay for the school out. 2. It keeps older adults out. (It also prohibits those with disabilities.)

Grading
Frankly, I think that grading while in the learning process is absurd. Testing, not grading, is a necessary part of learning. Testing tells the teacher and the student how they are progressing. Grading is infinitely useless in predicting or informing of a persons abilities and potential. Furthermore, it is childish; as if a reward needs to be dangled in front of people who have already been determined as self-motivated and intellectually hungry.

Interdisciplinary Curriculum
For instance, progressive elementary schools are using art to teach anthropology and math to teach music. A radical liberal arts college today would not lack a strong presence of the arts. It certainly would not promote P.E. more than it promoted the arts! Also, at progressive colleges, such as Wesleyan, there is more allowance for the student to enrich his or her learning experience by taking classes in vastly different disciplines without the risk of lowering their academic standing if they don’t perform well in subjects outside of their major.

Tuition
Where the charges or payment for college education are innovative, such as allowing the student to pay by working on a campus agri-busness, or giving full scholarship to students regardless of their financial situation if they are deemed qualified to attend the school (i.e. Cooper Union.)

Diversity or Cultural Presence
Progressive schools have had it for decades.

Modern Technology
i.e. online registration...

Innovation and Application
The idea of serial processing and parallel processing comes to mind as I think about this. Both are essential to what? more...

Bryn Mawr cannot be considered progressive or revolutionary anymore. In fact, the school now seems conservative. Feminism has advanced considerably.Yet the school remains in a mode of overcompensating false masculinity. The face I see now is that of a quiet stern matron. I question whether or not the need exists now, as certainly it did at Bryn Mawr’s beginning, to obtain intellectual validity for women by making a women’s college a proving ground in the image of the leading men’s colleges. I think that the idea of modeling after men’s elite colleges is now unnecessary. In my experience, people are judged more often on their professionalism and their ability to apply knowledge productively.

By remaining narrow and elite, the school feels contracted. It needs to stretch. I believe its future value depends on broadening it.

Bryn Mawr excels, in my short perspective, at the following:
Providing professors that offer substantial feedback and interaction with students.
Creating an attitude of colleagueship between teachers and students.
Assembling an amazing array of intellectually curious women.

More...

Is the college not proud of this important part of its history? Is the college not only not proud, but is it embarrassed?

It seems that M. Carey Thomas originally envisioned the Summer School as a place where women workers would study and frolic and have access to "things of the intellect and spirit." (Heller, 13) She based her ideas on the Summer School on the Workers Education Association, which was a British program that through education would prepare workers "for life, not livelihood." (Heller, 11) We could read this to mean that the educated workers would not be expected to take action or to provoke change in the social structures that bound them to their menial jobs.

That the Summer School at Bryn Mawr turned out women who were heavily involved in the organized labor movement, who took actions and provoked social changes, seemed to be a real surprise to Thomas. As Jane Worthington stated, "Miss Thomas didn't realize that a workers school would plunge Bryn Mawr into the heart of the organized labor movement." (Heller, 12)

Miss Thomas had created a Frankenstein's monster. Her social experiment pleased everyone as long as the students participated in education for education's sake. However, when her newly educated workers discovered their guts and their voices and began to be politically active--participating in demonstrations and strikes--Miss Thomas and the college trustees began to be nervous. By the time of its 1935 eviction, Miss Thomas joined the trustees in opposing the Summer School that she had founded. Her monster had taken on a life of its own.

I, too, am struck by similarities between the Summer School students and the McBrides I have gotten to know. Like "Women Workers in Industry," (Grumman, 23) we McBrides could be called Women Workers in Life. Many of us have held menial jobs in industry and business, we've cared for other people all our lives, and we come to Bryn Mawr knowing that we want an education, not because we need it for our resumes.

I loved the film "Women of Summer." I loved hearing all those proud, strong, articulate elderly women reminisce about the summers they spent together finding their power in education.

My Impressions of Bryn Mawr College

My first introduction to Bryn Mawr was in 1997 when I attended a concert by the late Carol Amado, who was my son’s violin teacher and also happened to be an honorary member of the Bryn Mawr College Faculty of Music at the time. My family and I had moved to the United States from Canada just a few years before, so I was not well acquainted with the area or the college itself. The concert took place in an upper gallery of Goodhart Hall on a Sunday afternoon in October under heavy gray skies. The rain pounded ceaselessly on the roof that afternoon. The noise threatened to drown out the musicians, so that the tall windows with a view to endless green lawns had to be closed. Perhaps it was the weather, or perhaps it was the medieval English architecture, but the place had a certain presence, hints of “Manderley” the beautiful mansion in Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca. “It kind of reminds me of Oxford,” I remember remarking to my husband. Who would have thought that I would be attending as a student just four years later!

My next contact with Bryn Mawr was in the form of a college admissions interview on a hot, sunny day in June in a charming little yellow house across from Wyndham. I was pleasantly surprised to see antique rugs and furniture as part of the décor, the kind of details one associates with a well-appointed home. The thought occurred to me that this was probably due to the fact that Bryn Mawr is a women’s college; generally, women seem to place more emphasis on creating comfortable surroundings.

Following this interview, where not only the ambience but also the college directors put me at ease, I attended an open house for prospective McBride students in November 2000, which took place in Wyndham. As I understand it, Wyndham was at one time a manor house that was donated by the owners to the college. It is now an inn for college guests, and has a formal dining room as well as meeting room facilities. The atmosphere of Wyndham, like the previous house, conveys warmth and hospitality. The soft colors, vintage carpets, and comfortable furnishings seemed surprising to me in a college setting, as did the buffet of pastries and coffee that preceded the meeting! I had expected a more officious atmosphere for a college with a reputation for being “the very best woman’s college there is” and one of the best in the nation.

Bryn Mawr has an intriguing, tangible sense of history that is reflected in its architecture. Taylor Hall and the Merion Residence Hall provide the only physical evidence that a Quaker philosophy was once intended to guide the education of young women. The original building, Taylor Hall, sits three stories tall on a gentle rise in the middle of the campus, and was constructed to serve a dual administrative and teaching purpose. Its simple, yet dignified lines suggest a certain pragmatism. The Merion Residence Hall, designed by the same architectural firm, was built to resemble a row of cottages and was specifically planned with women in mind. Helen Horowitz explains that the home-like style of the buildings was intended to give “greater comfort and less nervous excitement” (110), and the rooms were designed with attention to privacy and space in order to accommodate “the higher and more refined classes of Society” (110). It is apparent from reading Horowitz’s article that, despite some of the biases that shaped it, much thought and care went into the building of the college. If Bryn Mawr’s founder, Joseph Wright Taylor, seemed deeply devoted to his creation then the next great influence on the college, Martha Carey Thomas, was fairly obsessed with it.

A Quaker by birth, M. Carey Thomas’ family and religious connections were instrumental in helping her become elected as the first dean of the college, despite the fact that the board “was and remained for many years all male” (Horowitz). Although outwardly she professed her commitment to Quaker ideals, at heart M. Carey Thomas was a renaissance woman, revolutionary in her day for her comprehensive vision of education and equal opportunities for women. Whereas Joseph Taylor saw Bryn Mawr as a small women’s college that offered an advanced education within traditional, orthodox Quaker parameters, M. Carey Thomas’s model called for a cosmopolitan, secular spirit of scholarship in which Bryn Mawr offered “the highest standards of university training available in the United States” (115). To achieve this goal, not only did the college require a distinguished faculty and talented students, but also “a campus with the appearance of a great university” (www.brynmawr.edu/Library/Exhibits/thomas/intro.html).

In the years that followed construction of the first two buildings, a different style of architecture emerged under Thomas’ influence. Thomas strove to elevate the intellectual quality of the faculty and academic programs, and “demanded a new architectural setting as an appropriate symbol of the life within” (116). Thus we have inherited arched entrances into the park-like grounds, Jacobean quadrangles, turrets and castle-like ramparts. The Thomas Library is undoubtedly the most dramatic embodiment of M. Carey Thomas’ aspirations in its lofty chapel design with towers and battlements. In the Thomas Great Hall, which was originally the Reading Room of the Library, interior walls are faced with Tudor paneling, and the light streams through enormous windows ornamented with tracery. It is a vast room that was intended to express the "dignity of scholarship" (130). On the lower level of the Library, a rectangular cloister with a vaulted passageway and courtyard arcade were constructed to offer “an appropriate setting for the monastic renunciation that Thomas associated with the life of the mind” (130). All of these architectural elements manifest not only Thomas’ academic ambitions for the college, but her love of pageantry and drama, and her strength of personality.

Now that I am acquainted with some of Bryn Mawr’s history, the architecture, which attracted me from the outset, naturally has a greater significance. Whereas M. Carey Thomas may have had her flaws, as we all do, I am left with a deep admiration and appreciation for her fiery spirit and commitment to her vision of education, the benefits of which we are enjoying today. Although some changes have inevitably taken place in the outer form of the college, I would like to think that Joseph Taylor would be pleased with the level of caring (and lawfulness!) exhibited by faculty and students. M. Carey Thomas would surely be impressed with the independent, progressive spirit of the Bryn Mawr community, as it exists today, and the reputation for academic excellence that it continues to uphold.

Bibliography

Horowitz, Helen Lefkowitz. Alma Mater. Alfred A. Knopf (1984): pp 110, 115, 116, 130
Bryn Mawr College Library Special Collections. Sept. 32 – Dec. 20, 2001.p1

A bold and staunch feminist, M. Carey Thomas sought to build Bryn Mawr College in the image of men’s colleges. She believed the life of the mind was neuter, and therefore did not take into account a separate woman’s culture. One of the first women to be awarded a Ph.D., Thomas believed the ideal educational institution had to be void of feminine spaces. She wanted to appropriate the library and the laboratory of men. Domesticity in all its forms was anathema to her. My feelings were mixed upon reading about this defining, yet opinionated woman so dominant in Bryn Mawr’s history. In 2001, it’s left to my imagination and what I can glean from historical perspectives to appreciate how in 1885, a bright woman would have had to model herself after a man in order to prove academic prowess. In the Twenty-first Century, I have to admit to taking for granted the benefits forged by these earlier feminists when I say that I’m not comfortable with the idea of subverting my feminine side or adopting male characteristics in order to prove myself worthy academically.

Typically female strengths are still devalued as the College aggressively seeks prospective students who’ve demonstrated competence in so-called male-dominated fields such as math and science. How many eighteen-year-old high school students -- prospective undergraduates -- upon reading the history and literature of the College, don’t apply because they feel they’re not “male-like?” There is the not so subtle message throughout the College’s history that the male prototype was/is superior, all the while touting women’s abilities in education.

One hundred and sixteen years after its birth, the admissions standards remain high and exclusive, lending an air of pride to those who’ve been admitted, yet I wonder the cost of so narrowly defining the Bryn Mawr woman. Obviously some women are missing out on a first-rate education because they didn’t take enough advanced math courses in high school. And the College is missing out by not taking chances on students who don’t fit one profile.

The one area where Bryn Mawr makes an exception in the admissions process is through their McBride Scholars Program. Women are selected based on age rather than social class. One of the Program’s criterion is that the women must be “beyond traditional college age.” Otherwise, the College is perhaps more generous when considering the educational backgrounds of these women.

Bryn Mawr College and the Culture of Academic Rigor

From its inception in 1885 under the leadership of M. Carey Thomas until the present time under the presidency of Nancy J. Vickers, the objective of Bryn Mawr College has been to provide a rigorous, collegiate education for women. An excerpt from the Bryn Mawr Mission Statement of December 1998 reads as follows:

“The mission of Bryn Mawr College is to provide a rigorous education and to encourage the pursuit of knowledge as preparation for life and work. Bryn Mawr teaches and values critical, creative and independent habits of thought and expression […].”

“Bryn Mawr sustains a culture of innovative inquiry by training extraordinary women in a tradition of rigorous, independent scholarship.”

No alteration of this philosophy of education can be found in the McBride Curriculum : “McBrides enroll in the same rigorous course of study expected of traditional-aged college undergraduates […]”, and

“McBrides conduct their rigorous academic pursuits [etc.].”

The ideal of a rigorous intellectual training is the essence of the Bryn Mawr culture. Now that I have experienced a whole semester at Bryn Mawr, I am not surprised to see how often the word “rigorous” is used in the Bryn Mawr literature. But, I must admit that it has taken me many weeks to fully understand what “rigor” means in practical terms, and what the implications are. The Oxford Dictionary defines “rigorous” as 1. extremely thorough, exhaustive, or accurate, and, 2. strictly applied to or adhered to as in a belief, opinion or system. “Rigor” in the nominative form has a rather different meaning: harshness; rigidity, inflexibility; hardship, austerity, discipline, and is derived from the Latin word for “stiffness.”

Is the curriculum at Bryn Mawr “extremely thorough”, or is it a system that leaves something to be desired? My experience at Bryn Mawr, thus far, is that the courses cover a great deal of information, which in turn requires a great deal of research and reading. The breadth of material covered reflects a curriculum that seems to be designed not to leave anything out. I question the value of this style of learning because it barely leaves any room (or time!) for in-depth learning.

A conversation I had with a Bryn Mawr graduate student may illustrate the point. My friend (who has an M.A. from a well-respected university in The Netherlands) was a little bewildered at the considerable amount of data given in his graduate courses without explanation or context. He asked his professor what the relevance was of some of the material to the course theme, and was told, “Don’t worry about it, just learn it.” As no further discussion was welcomed, my friend resigned himself to the fact that this is the “Bryn Mawr way”, and this is the way it has always been done here. No one is going to take you by the hand and give you a step-by-step explanation. You have to figure it out for yourself. Did his question not fall under the category of critical thinking? The built-in implication seems to be that breadth is more important than depth, even at the graduate school level, and the assumption is that the student is already in possession of those “critical, creative and independent habits of thought” mentioned above, and knows how to apply them.

The short-term disability of the “horizontal” approach to learning is the extent to which it may become overwhelming and anxiety producing to try to retain the information, let alone think intelligently about it. If the student is not shown how to evaluate information, how to think critically, or how to move with fluidity between the abstract and the particular, she may not develop this ability very well. On the other hand, one might argue that if the student struggles long enough she will eventually acquire that skill. Somewhere along the line the definition of rigor has changed from exhaustive to exhausting!

In practical terms, it takes time to digest new information and make sense of it so that the information can become useful in some way. I think it would be helpful to reduce the quantity of material in a course, and place more emphasis on examining it in class. In this way, inexperienced scholars can benefit from the guidance of the experienced professor who has traveled the intellectual paths before. The old-fashioned approach of the professor in the role of “talking head” with little, if any, interaction with the students is surely an anachronism by now. In general, there seems to be such a concern to cover all the material by the end of the semester that questions from the class almost seem like an imposition. These conditions do not empower a student with the confidence that seems so integral to the Bryn Mawr philosophy of “innovative inquiry.”

Another aspect of the “rigor” at Bryn Mawr is the degree requirements. Speaking as a McBride, one might argue that the Math stipulation seems a little silly for a middle-aged student with a background in humanities, who has no intention of becoming an architect or an engineer at this point in her life. The College might also take into consideration the value of obligating the McBride student who has never displayed a knack for languages to struggle through two years of it, when her future job opportunities in the U.S. will more than likely not require a foreign language. The liberal arts program is intended to broaden the scope of our knowledge, certainly, but perhaps there should be an element of choice in deciding which courses will be practical or useful for the individual student.

Bryn Mawr no doubt wishes to perpetuate its specific vision of education in order to protect its academic legacy. One of the goals of M. Carey Thomas was “to make the College the leading proving ground for educational attainment equal to that of Harvard, Yale or Johns Hopkins.” In a man’s world, she adopted the format used at leading men’s colleges to prove that women were equally capable of rigorous academic training and intellectual achievement. Bryn Mawr is proud of its “tradition of exceeding expectation, of acting as a standard-bearer in women’s scholarship.” Although it appears that Bryn Mawr no longer needs to prove itself (social attitudes towards women have changed considerably in the last 100 years, and Bryn Mawr has produced respected scholars and productive members of society), it clearly wishes to maintain what it has fought for because “women are often still expected to achieve more modestly than men.” However, the question that would suggest a “disabling” element here is: “Is our conventional approach to learning still the best way for women to realize their intellectual potential, or are we mainly holding on to this approach for the sake of the reputation of the college?

In addition to the ideal of rigor, the Bryn Mawr literature frequently mentions the word “achievement.” Except to a degree in the McBride program, Bryn Mawr does not give prominence to goals such as personal fulfillment. It wants to see results: it is interested in the academic and worldly success of its students. Bryn Mawr also wants to “encourage students to be responsible citizens who provide service to and leadership for an increasingly interdependent world.” These are admirable directions to steer people in, but the importance given to achieving specific goals and becoming a success story can take away from the simple joy of learning.

Ultimately, the decision to accept the rigorous academic culture that Bryn Mawr celebrates is a matter of choice. There are other less high-profile colleges, colleges that are less steeped in tradition and offer perhaps a more flexible, yet still sound academic model. There are colleges that are more geared to the arts and music, but still fulfill the academic goals of the student. These colleges may be as passionate as Bryn Mawr is in terms of the expectations they have for their students; their programs may be just as “rigorous”, but the focus is less intellectual. Clearly, there is a place for these colleges just as much as there is one for Bryn Mawr; it is important to have choices in response to the range of talents and potential in a society. Bryn Mawr is still a process of discovery for me in terms of what I am capable of. In the short-term, those of us who choose the intellectual “rigor” of Bryn Mawr may find it difficult to adjust to, but during the long run who knows where the academic “hardship, austerity and discipline”(5) of this path will lead us?

September 2001, I arrived
Full of pride
I was a McBride ready for a College Sem High

Life of Learning was first
Starting to quench my thirst…
A fairy tale next
I admit I was vexed…
Then, let’s take a stand; back it up
Posting was mine
Anne’s grace was sublime
A College Sem High

In the middle it hurt!
Daddy was gone
Confusion set in
Like a bad song
Pieces of life
Thrown up in the sky
One by one fell
Back into my heart
Thanks to god, family and friends
A College Sem High

Tacit knowing, who knows?
Can’t say-- still flowing
Beloved the ghost
Stirring, unnerving; took us all for a ride
She was a wonderful host

The symphony is playing
Carey Thomas is saying
This is my history, my quest
Go girls go!!

Thank you my friends at College Sem
Most of all Anne, you guided, you led
You got into my head
Telling, re-telling
I have a choice
I’ve found my voice
A College Sem High

written by Louise Tillett

September 2001
I arrived
Full of pride
I was a McBride ready for a College Sem High

Life of Learning was first
Starting to quench my thirst…
A fairy tale next
I admit I was vexed…
Then, let’s take a stand; back it up
Posting was mine
Anne’s grace was sublime
A College Sem High

In the middle it hurt!
Daddy was gone
Confusion set in
Like a bad song
Pieces of life
Thrown up in the sky
One by one fell
Back into my heart
Thanks to god, family and friends
A College Sem High

Tacit knowing, who knows?
Can’t say-- still flowing
Beloved the ghost
Stirring, unnerving; took us all for a ride
She was a wonderful host

The symphony is playing
Carey Thomas is saying
This is my history, my quest
Go girls go!!

Thank you my friends at College Sem
Most of all Anne, you guided, you led
You got into my head
Telling, re-telling
I have a choice
I’ve found my voice
A College Sem High

Initial Observations on Bryn Mawr College Readings

Many of us arrived on this college campus for the first time feeling a mixture of excitement tempered with a bit of trepidation at the immense journey about to be undertaken. For me, Bryn Mawr College symbolized, and still does, academic excellence steeped in rich tradition. Just what that tradition entailed I presumed was something along the lines of a founder, and a subsequent series of college presidents, administration, faculty, students and alumnae/i, all focused on creating and maintaining the highest standards of academic excellence.
After reading the Bryn Mawr packet these views are unchanged, but have been broadened considerably. There are now faces and names associated with the founders of BMC. These individuals have taken shape as the inspiration and motivation that made the Bryn Mawr vision a reality. As a latter-day Mawter I feel their influence as I walk around this campus, created as a tribute to the “dignity of scholarship” and “the life of the mind” that they so cherished. My esteem and gratitude for them grew as I realized more clearly the great difficulties they had to overcome in order to create a rigorous college for women in late nineteenth century America. But I’ve also learned that sometimes their motives and methods were not always of the highest caliber.
They say there are skeletons in everyone’s closet, and Bryn Mawr, it appears, has a few of its own. In reading the history of BMC I found that I was especially intrigued by the persona of M. Carey Thomas -- in awe of her intelligence, and inspired by her determination to bring her dreams to fruition despite the adverse social pressures of her time. After overcoming daunting gender obstacles in the pursuit of her own Ph.D. she went on to greatly influence all aspects of the formation of Bryn Mawr College, including faculty selection and curriculum, even campus architecture and the admissions process. Later, she went on to become the college’s first female president. The legacy and reputation for high standards that Bryn Mawr enjoys today is due in large part to her vision, devotion and unyielding drive. This bold, iconoclastic woman who championed higher education rights for women is entirely in keeping with what I expected to find in Bryn Mawr’s history.
In many ways, M. Carey Thomas presents as a figure of controversy. But some of her actions were downright abhorrent, even when judged by the mores of her time. For example, she was a known anti-Semite who personally screened applications in order to deny admission to Jewish candidates or those with Jewish sounding names. However, some of her motivations for other actions are less clear. When she focused the marketing of Bryn Mawr College on the wealthy daughters of the privileged, was she a social snob, or a shrewd planner who recognized that crucial future endowments depended on a prosperous alumnae base? Toward the end of her tenure she became an autocratic president who denied herself few material pleasures. Was her extravagance due to misuse of power and self-indulgence, or did she see the value in maintaining appearances on a par with comparable men’s colleges?
In 1921 she helped to promote an unconventional experiment in education with the launching of the Bryn Mawr Summer School for Women Workers. Scholarships and stipends allowed working class women the opportunity to study political science, economics, and literature on the college level. By this time, Thomas’ feminist sympathies had broadened to include women from outside her own race, culture and social position, and the Summer School students were a diverse population. Many said that offering rigorous study to blue collar workers was doomed to failure, but the project continued successfully for seventeen years. The overwhelming majority of its participants, faculty as well as students, praised it as a positive and enriching life experience. Despite this, in 1938, as a member of the board of directors of BMC, M. Carey Thomas voted to abolish the Summer School for Women Workers.
Although economic factors undoubtedly came into play in both the formation of the Summer School and, later on, the Catherine E. McBride Scholars Program (it would have been fiscally irresponsible not to consider this fact of life) – in these two particular instances I applaud Bryn Mawr’s course of action. It chose to deal with the reality of economic necessity by reaching out and providing the opportunity for intellectual growth to non-traditional students. And although the proud history of Bryn Mawr College is not without some regrettable moments, I’m heartened that these incidents haven’t been deleted from these pages, and that we have been encouraged, in fact required, to read them.