Traditional Students: Look Elsewhere
Written: Oct 02 '06 (Updated Oct 02 '06)
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Pros: beautiful campus, great students, good food, study abroad programs, strong ties to finance world
Cons: Isolated, stressful, competitive, students can graduate without serious education in the sciences or Western Civ.
The Bottom Line: A good choice for some, but with too many problems.
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| thrasymacha's Full Review: Wellesley College |
I am a current student at Wellesley and consider myself politically conservative and strongly Catholic. The following were my comments for the ISI Guide to Colleges, which evaluates colleges on their core curricula and adherence to political correctness and educational fads.
LEADERSHIP
The current president, Diana Chapman Walsh, is retiring at the end of AY2007. A committee of students, faculty and admins are using this guide to find her replacement (http://www.wellesley.edu/President/charge.pdf).
A few notable moments of DCW’s tenure:
1. The Capital Campaign, which raised $470million in five years and brought us a new student center and a Center for the Humanities
2. A commitment to ‘spiritual life’ in the college through the Dean of Religious and Spiritual Life and an emphasis on multifaith approaches instead of orthodoxy in any one religion (see: http://www.spirituality.ucla.edu/newsletter/past/volume 2/7/1.html)
3. Utter opposition to Phyllis Schlafy’s visit and support of the ‘Sister, Can we Speak?’ therapy group formed for her visit
4. General circumvention of the College Republicans. CR officers met with her multiple times about harassment and vandalism and her office did nothing.
5. Increased support for funded internships and study abroad
6. Refusal to consider on-campus housing and academic accommodation for student mothers.
CURRICULUM
The distribution requirements can be as serious or as easy as you make them. I like the idea that everyone has to be at least familiar with all fields of study.
Best classes (from experience and peer advice):
ASTR 101: Intro Astronomy. The Astro faculty is outstandingly devoted to their students
ENG 251: Modern Poetry. The professor, Kate Brogan, is so good that she teaches the class instead of poet Frank Bidart, whose work is studied!
HIST 258: Freedom and Dissent in American History. Prof. Auerbach takes conservative ideas seriously and doesn’t let students get away with repeating the same PC nonsense that earns credit in other departments.
PHIL 221: History of Modern Philosophy. Unbelievably rigorous course covering Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, Hume, Locke, Kant, Berkeley and their contemporary critics.
POL1 215: Courts, Law and Politics: You have to apply to get in, it’s so popular
POL4 248: Power and Politics: Rigorous and critical reading of a variety of political theorists
SOCIAL LIFE
The official rule for guests is that they may stay over for 3 nights a week, but this is never enforced. Wellesley women are vigilant about men in the dorms and will stop to ask who he’s with.
Our alcohol policy is that the owner must be of age and drinking in a private space (i.e., not the living room or hallway). One GREAT thing about Wellesley is our Good Samaritan Policy, which means that if someone has had so much to drink that they’re ill, a friend can call the police to take her to the infirmary and no one is penalized. This keeps everyone extremely safe.
FACILITIES
The newest building is the Wang Student Center. It’s extremely modern and has space for meetings, ‘hanging out’ (there’s a caf�, a pub and a pool table), and two living-room type areas. There is also a top-notch cafeteria.
Some of the older dorms are a disaster, especially the ones in the Hazard Quadrangle. The bathrooms have mold and broken doors, there are insect problems, tiles and ceilings are coming apart, etc. Students have petitioned the college for change but none has come.
ORGS
Many of our clubs are rather inactive. The most active are College Government, Residential Life/House Council, College Dems and Reps, Women for Choice, the singing, dance and theatre groups, and cultural organizations. There are no organized intramural sports.
SAFETY
Wellesley is incredibly safe from outside crime. However, Wellesley has a huge problem with mental illness and suicide that outsiders rarely hear about.
Our on-campus counseling center, the Stone Center, has problems with overbooking. Many students feel alienated and depressed, partially due to the intensely competitive atmosphere. But most chilling is that there has been a suicide every year for the past five years. At a school of 2300, this is huge. Wellesley has only come forward about one death being a suicide. The rest are mired in ‘investigation’ or nothing is said publicly for fear of negative press. There is currently an investigation about a death this spring of a healthy junior who was found dead in her room with no foul play.
There is a student group organized to raise awareness about mental health but they have not changed the College’s or the Stone Center’s policies yet.
POLITICAL ATMOSPHERE
Yes, Wellesley as an institution is hyper-PC. Notoriously left-wing departments are: Chemistry (oddly enough), Women’s Studies, Peace and Justice Studies, Africana Studies, and Spanish. The Poli Sci, Philosophy and Econ programs are more traditional and ideologically balanced.
Wellesley is a difficult environment for conservatives, pro-life advocates, anti-feminists, and traditional Christians.
The two hottest issues are abortion and gay marriage. If you don’t support unlimited access to abortion, you will have a hard time speaking about your beliefs at Wellesley. There is a ‘debate’ (really a flame war) at least once a semester on our general online forum where the majority pro-choicers attack the handful of pro-lifers arguing for there side. It becomes incredibly nasty and personal.
The 2004 election was particularly difficult. I had Bush posters ripped off my door and threats written on my whiteboard. Other CRs experienced similar things. A friend has posted pro-life posters on her door and someone had torn them down and replaced them with Planned Parenthood information. The CRs wrote pro-GOP messages on the sidewalks in chalk before the election, and many of them were defaced by the College Democrats. The defacings were borderline obscene (I’m sure you can imagine the variety of Bush and Dick jokes possible).
I attended a speech by a head researcher at the Wellesley Centers for Women on her book about right-wing women. She had ‘infiltrated’ meetings and interviewed conservative women. Her conclusion was that these women should be pities, because they’ve been used by men to advocate against their own interests. One shocking quote from her speech, in a section on Evangelical women, was “and to think that these women are highly educated!”. She went on to lament the failure of higher ed to weed out or change traditional women. The WCW is supported in part by donations and tuition to Wellelsey
At a dinner party thrown by the President for faculty and students, I heard one history professor talk about the former Chair of the CRs. He had had her in his class and knew she was a conservative. He commented that she was exceptionally bright, and did well in his class, but he felt like he had failed because at the end of it she was still conservative. The other professors then told similar stories.
RELIGION
The on-campus chapel is beautiful. However, much of what made it Christian has been removed, and President Walsh recently announced plans to continue making the building a ‘multifaith space’ instead of a Christian Church.
The religious life program at Wellesley is grounded in multiculturalism, the belief that all faiths have equal claims on truth and that pursuit of one should not entail orthodoxy. Thus, the Catholic group sponsors Dignity, an org for gay Catholics, and pro-choice activities. I can only speak about Christians on campus, but so many are dissatisfied with the Wellesley model that they either join outside churches or groups at Harvard and MIT.
For example: Flower Sunday is a major tradition at Wellesley that has been turned in to a multifaith pageant. Last year’s theme was ‘water’, so representatives from every religious group read something about water. Then the Dean of Religious life performed an animist/pagan water ritual, complete with rain dance and invocation of the elements.
FINANCIAL AID
The only experience I have with Fin Aid is that is carries over to Study Abroad. So, if you elect to go abroad, you pay what you would normally pay to Wellesley instead of paying the program directly. This can be great or horribly expensive, depending on your financial situation and where you want to go.
OTHER
In short, Wellesley can be great for some students and a prison for others. It is isolated and the communal values are pushed on you through the residential life system. It's very rare to live off-campus, though those that do count it as a terrific decision. Despite the school's claims, Wellesley is NOT a place where you become independent. The College coddles and protects its students to a paternalizing degree.
If you're looking for creative people, an entrepreneurial spirit, intellectual curiosity, opportunities to meet students at other colleges, interaction with Boston/Cambridge, or just plain eccentricity sprinkled through the school year, Wellesley is not the best match. You can seek these things out, but they are not part of Wellesley's culture.
Recommended:
No
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Epinions.com ID:
thrasymacha
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Reviews written: 1
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