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Reading over these posts, I was struck by how often the question of what it means to attend an all-women’s college came up. I guess it’s appropriate enough since the class is held at Bryn Mawr and the vast majority of the people in it are, in fact, Bryn Mawr students. As someone who’s pretty passionate about women’s issues, I feel a peculiar, if not sometimes confusing, affinity with Bryn Mawr.

Last semester, when I attended the Vagina Monologues, I felt a sense of awe as I sat in Thomas Great Hall. It wasn’t because of the action of the stage (though the fact that it was that well-attended is, in itself, enough of a statement about the students’ priorities), it was due to the fact that while I still was surrounded by familiar-looking oil portraits of dead, white historically significant figures in robes, these figures were women. They did not alienate me. Yes they were white, wealthy, natural-born American citizens, but they were women. Like me! My God, what an absolutely banal observation to make, but one that is so infrequent that it took me by surprise. I felt at home. I felt empowered. I felt a sense of longing.

I think of the current exhibit in Magill Library – prominent figures, or benefactors, or perhaps past presidents of Haverford College. Dead white men in dark wooden frames, all unsmiling, none attractive to be sure. What I feel when I walk through that hallway in Magill is that I’m a dimply lit place of higher education. (Somehow the dimmer the lighting, the more serious and more studious the atmosphere? Also the darker and oilier the wood…) More than just that, however, I feel privileged to be in such a place. Not privileged, in the sense of being grateful, but privileged in the sense of “I should thank my lucky stars that an institution as exclusive as Haverford, one that produces so many successful men throughout its history (I mean, just look at the paintings on the walls!) to whom I, Karina Puttieva, could never compare (I mean, just look how portly and important and mustached and concerned they look! Where’s my intelligence-bearing look of composure? Where are my beard and gold-rimmed spectacles? How awkward for me to have remained so naked all this time, how womanly…) should have conceded to looking the other way just this once and letting me in. Really, frankly, it was probably because I’m foreign. Diversity is popular nowadays.

What I felt that day in Thomas Great Hall was a sense of being welcomed, invited into the circle of oil portraits; that for once I could locate some small but significant part of my identity in that Incomparably Great Historical Figures. Not only could I see myself in the “future” of such an institution, but I could also sort of, kind of, locate myself in its “past.” That continuum makes a difference. Roots make a difference.