December 19, 2014 - 11:04
An essay on the histoy and present of Bryn Mawr College
Bryn Mawr College was founded by Joseph Taylor to be a school for well-off Quaker women to receive a religious education. However, much of its identity was shaped under the leadership of Carey M Thomas. The decisions she made molded Bryn Mawr into the learning environment it is today. She made these decisions based on the idea of what kind of people she wanted at her school. She also based her decisions on what she considered the ideal space for these students to learn in. Although many of these choices were made to create an institution that rivaled any men’s college, they were also exclusionary in many ways. When a college doesn’t go out of its way to encourage diverse students to apply, it is implicit in their exclusion.
During this time period, there was a clear idea of what a learning environment looked like. Thomas “shared her era's belief in the power of the physical environment to shape communal spirit and individual character. She brought to Bryn Mawr a strong, feminist commitment to the needs of young women scholars.” (Horowitz, 11). It was very important that Thomas sought to give women a place to learn equal to the ones available only to men, however in its adaptation of the established system of higher education, women’s colleges like Bryn Mawr also adopted their classism, racism, and elitism. To say that learning only happens in a certain type of environment, one that looks like Bryn Mawr, is to deny the idea of everyone’s ability and right to learn and achieve an education. In reality, learning can occur anywhere. You can achieve an education without a classroom. The design of Bryn Mawr and other schools like it also created an idea of who attends schools like this, who has a right to an education. This system of exclusion not only prevented the spread of knowledge from these institutions to a wider variety of people, but also dismissed the idea that there is merit to interacting with and learning from people different from you.
Bryn Mawr offered a quality education to women who were systematically excluded from the academic world. However, the type of women admitted to the college was limited. As Bryn Mawr moved away from its quaker roots and as Thomas became wealthy, the college constructed more extravagant buildings. Students also paid different amounts for different quality of housing. Thomas, as a wealthy woman, claimed that “differences in housing did not affect students' judgments about each other. She dismissed the notion that students' economic backgrounds shaped college social structure because she identified with the affluent student, not the one forced to live in pinched surroundings.” (Horowitz, 19) This argument is one that underlines the way in which class issues were dismissed by Thomas. In addition, Thomas was very clear in her intention to attract wealthy young women to the college. Because of this, Class was a barrier for admission of students at Bryn Mawr. Race was another. Thomas didn’t want students of color at Bryn Mawr. She gave speeches on white supremacy. For a long time black students weren’t welcome, then when they were, they weren’t allowed to live on campus. Even when they were permitted to be residents, the environment was not one that was welcoming to them. By 1960, only 9 black students had graduated from Bryn Mawr. For a long time, the only people worthy of education at Bryn Mawr were wealthy and white.
As the college has grown into the current day, it has gotten better with admitting women from all different backgrounds, although it could still do better. However, the definition of woman has changed. The gender binary is being accepted as a social construct that doesn’t need to be adhered to. Now there is a lot of debate on the place of transgender students at Bryn Mawr. The initial design of the buildings at Bryn Mawr made clear the message that “The life of the mind was neuter: "Science and literature and philology are what they are and inalterable...Bryn Mawr created special opportunities for women to enter the sacred groves of scholarship, but the groves had no gender...As the visible sign that truth had no sex, the Bryn Mawr campus gave no clue as to the gender of its student body.” (Horowitz, 13). However, it was created as a college for women because at the time, women were systematically excluded from higher education as well as marginalized in daily life. Today, women’s colleges offer a place for women to thrive in a female-oriented environment. However, Bryn Mawr excludes trans women. There is a policy on trans students that is not only vague, but also requires a legal female I.D., which not all trans women have the means to acquire. This exclusion also comes from not encouraging trans students to apply, the same black students weren’t encouraged to apply. There are also people who identify as neither male or female. Do they have a place at a women’s college? And what about the already present community of trans men at women’s colleges? Genderqueer and trans people have been discriminated against on the basis of gender as cis women have been throughout history. Bryn Mawr was shaped as a space for those whose gender might inhibit their right to a quality education. Perhaps Bryn Mawr should look to its own architecture when deciding its policy on trans students. It should learn from its past of exclusion and be more proactive in creating policy that not only allows trans students to apply, but encourages them. Although care needs to be taken when drafting policy in order to ensure correct use of language, it is imperative that action is taken as soon as possible.