The Vassar Chronicles | 150-year history shows significant changes

Jon Cruz Columnist

It’s hard to believe that this is my final installment of The Vassar Chronicles. Until my senior thesis crept up, I hadn’t missed a single week, and I’ve been very fortunate to have an incredible group of editors—most recently and most supportively, John Palmer ’07—who have not only helped make the transition to a biweekly rotation to conclude my time on The Miscellany News. smooth, but have also remained incredibly patient and supportive despite my sometimes unreliable turnaround schedule. I’ve been really fortunate to have so much support from The Miscellany News itself in my little Vassar history project.

I have been even more fortunate to have the support of so many different readers. Over the course of four years, I have positioned myself as a Vassar cheerleader. I have intermittently gotten joking comments from professors, and less-joking e-mails from fellow students, inquiring whether I have the capacity to be critical in my column. This surprises me, because, while I’ve always been upbeat about the College, I think I’ve presented many subjects in a sometimes heavy-handed manner. Certainly, the interview with Have a Good and the piece on Goonies star Kerri Green ’89 were on the lighter side, but I can’t say I endorsed the potential link between Vassar’s once-mandatory nude profile photographs for freshmen and eugenics experiments. But, on the whole, I’ve provided a positive viewpoint on Vassar’s history. So, for this, my final time writing as a member of Vassar’s oldest student publication, I figured I’d step a little out of (perceived) character. There is something positive to be taken from my reflection today, but, as a parting thought, I want to reflect a bit on what I see at Vassar today, as a senior, in the context of our college’s historical image. So, excuse me if my last chance to share my thoughts here in The Miscellany News is a bit more overtly opinionated than usual.

I worry, sometimes, about the College that I love. After the College went co-ed in 1969 and the first waves of men arrived, there was a highly publicized, highly articulated fear on the part of many students that some administrators were shifting focus away from what made Vassar unique. The College’s early days were constrained by social perceptions of the proper place of women, but the College had since evolved into a vanguard of progressive thought. Vassar had served as the home for socialist conventions, radical student organizations, artistic communities, and, with the arrival of the first men attracted to the campus, a burgeoning and visible gay population. (The latter bit was not a new development, of course. It just attracted the staff of Esquire magazine.)

One of the strongest legitimate fears of these students was that some in the College were reacting against a less-marketable “gay” image, a less-mainstream “liberal” image, and a less “traditional” image for the average college student. But, of course, Vassar has never attracted the average college student. Certainly none of the names that so often pepper our school’s promotional materials—Ellen Swallow Richards 1888, Jackie Kennedy Onassis 1939, Edna St. Vincent Millay 1917, Meryl Streep 1971, and Eric Marcus 1980—were “ordinary,” “middle-of-the-road,” “typical” college students.

There’s a great, old promotional poster for Vassar that lists some notable alumni, not necessarily because of major business accomplishments, or political prowess, or even traditional fame; they’re just listed for solid contributions to humankind, and they’re celebrated for these accomplishments: a black woman pioneer, a male gay rights activist in the closing years of the twentieth century, a Japanese princess who promoted education in her home country in the nineteenth century, and so on. This type of advertisement seems to have gone out of rotation, and it’s too bad, because I think it emphasizes all the right things. Vassar alumni are more often than not politically aware and active.

Why not focus on these people, instead of implying political apathy by moving away from the image of Vassar the publicly-conscious, and instead of Vassar the “all-American”? This isn’t even a liberal or conservative issue; it’s a chance to welcome more voices to campus.

I’m not condemning anyone in particular. In fact, admissions did a wonderful job overhauling parts of its web site. I’m a touch concerned, though, that there seems to be this curious emphasis on organized athletics throughout our college’s promotions at the expense of other things. I always liked that such a culture didn’t exist on campus. I felt that athletics, like drama, or the newspaper, or debate, or music, or dance was an option from which students could choose. I don’t quite understand, why only one of these possibilities seems singled out for attention. That’s unfortunate.

It has nothing to do with “jocks” or “athleticism.” Vassar has a long and celebrated history as a pioneer in collegiate athletics. What always made that history strong was its place as a part of a whole. I know a lot of coaches still emphasize that athletics are a part of a whole; indeed, many scholar-athletes on campus do the same. So where’s the disconnect? Somewhere along the line, that part is removed from the whole, and is advertised as something in and of itself. That’s a definite break with a historical trend, and it’s precisely what our predecessors feared a few years after the college went co-ed and very publicly tried to shed its “girly” image. I don’t like that the college bucked rose and gray for “manlier” colors so athletes would feel more secure on the field, and I like even less the seeming turnaround on the issue of athletics in the curriculum in the first place. I see it as a step towards an uncertain goal of conformity.

There is nothing wrong with attracting different kinds of people to our campus as long as we don’t betray those kinds of individuals who have been interested in being part of Vassar for decades. There is an old campus brochure in which one of my favorite professors claims that while the official shtick is that there is no such thing as a “typical Vassar student,” he could always identify what a typical one was like. I used to totally agree with this sentiment. Our recent, newfound emphasis on alcohol policy as the source for greatest contention on campus—as opposed to racial equality, or admissions procedure, or campus employee rights and job protection, or concerns regarding student activities and campus life in general is cause for concern.

Vassar is quirky. That’s what makes us different from our “peer institutions.” Why not be the best of what we are, rather than conform to some set of outside standards? We shouldn’t be afraid to be different. We should be proud.

Maybe I’m just wrong. Maybe—as hard as this is to accept, given my ridiculously far-left political tendencies—I’m something of a “Vassar reactionary.” Maybe that’s close-minded of me. Maybe I was wrong, and just never noticed these realities of Vassar campus life from the start. Maybe I buried my head in the College’s archives and missed a few obvious signs from early in my career. Maybe I was misinformed?

But, then, I’m a historian. Things change. After all, if Vassar didn’t change sometimes, well, I wouldn’t be here! We’d still be a women’s college, we’d still have physical education requirements, we’d still have a core curriculum, and we’d still have the silencing of student opinion. Change can be really good. And, despite my dire warnings, I’ve seen a lot of positive change on campus. There are a lot of individuals who are relatively new to the Vassar family who have, in the opinion of this Vassar observer, done nothing but improve the life and well-being of the campus. There are also a lot of individuals who have been on campus for quite some time who haven’t lost sight of what it means to be at Vassar. The many professors I’ve had on campus, or with whom I’ve interacted, and so many of the students I’ve gotten to know as friends or, just as frequently, as respondents from columns I have written, also give me continued confidence that this college is the downright awesome place I know it is. We’re not doomed. We’re changing, maybe. I just think we need to consider what those changes mean. After all, historically, we’ve changed quite a bit, but we’ve also clinged held on to tradition.

Choosing Vassar was the easiest decision I ever made in my life. It was also the best. I want that decision to be as easy for future students as it was for me, and as it was for so many students who came before me. I want the future Vassar chronicles to be about an institute that is, to me, recognizable. I know it can be, and I hope it will be. Let’s continue to be a beacon for liberal arts education, a place for the quirky and intellectually curious, and for the well-balanced student. Let’s place emphasis on the whole, instead of on particularly attractive and consumer-friendly parts.