“Remind me again,” came the exasperated voice from the back seat. “Why are we here?”
Anyone who’s been confined to a car with a moody high school junior on a spring-break college tour knows the tone.
We’re here, I explained, because we’re driving right by Hollins University, and I thought we should look at it. Studies show that girls who attend single-sex colleges perform better than those who go to co-ed schools.
Besides, it has a great art program, I told my aspiring artist daughter.
“All girls?” she growled. “I don’t think so.”
I wondered whether she’d even get out of the car. She did. And an hour into the tour – after an art major gave her a peek at the quirky little studios available to the students – something changed.
“I could see myself here,” she whispered as we walked through the library.
Back in the car, I mentioned that Sweet Briar College was having an open house later that week. We could check out that all-women’s school on our way back from Virginia Tech.
“Why not,” she said.
Victory.
I remember reading a study at the time that claimed only about 6 percent of high school girls would even consider a single-sex college. Only a fraction of those would chose one.
Apparently, my girl was part of the six. She was not, however, part of the fraction.
Still, it was impossible to step on those storied women’s campuses and come away unchanged.
Which brings us to news that Sweet Briar College is closing in August. According to a college spokesperson, Sweet Briar’s full-time, degree-seeking student body shrunk to 532 this year, and the school has just 7,697 living graduates. The number of alumnae is sometimes inflated to 14,096, but that includes any student who spent about a semester on campus.
The 114-year-old liberal arts college is so rural – 15 miles north of Lynchburg, about 120 miles from Richmond – that most Virginians have never seen its breathtaking 3,000-plus acre campus.
That’s a pity. With apologies to graduates of Virginia’s other bucolic colleges and universities, Sweet Briar is easily the most stunning school in the state.
In the distant past, Sweet Briar had a reputation for catering to privileged Southern girls who came to campus with their horses. In modern times, it transformed into a college that kept its equestrian traditions while offering engineering and biochemistry programs and sharply discounted tuition.
In spite of those efforts, the school’s board voted unanimously to make Sweet Briar the latest casualty among all-female schools. According to figures on the Women’s College Coalition website, there were 230 women’s colleges in 1960. Last year, there were 47.
Sad but inevitable, some say.
Don’t tell that to fiercely loyal alums such as Virginia Beach lawyer Ann Crenshaw, Sweet Briar class of 1976.
Like many Sweet Briar graduates, she was horrified by last week’s news and distressed about the way the school broke it. She – and others – learned that their alma mater was closing through the media.
“Certainly, they should have given the stakeholders, the students, alumnae, parents, some notice,” she said. “They deserve better than that; they deserved to be included.”
Turns out, the stakeholders Crenshaw spoke of are organizing. Using social media, a strong network of outraged “Vixens” – the school mascot – are organizing to protest the closure.
And block it.
According to news reports Friday, a Richmond law firm has been hired to explore legal remedies.
After a flurry of conference calls, an Internet fundraising campaign was launched last week to beef up the roughly $85 million endowment, which administrators claim is insufficient to keep the school afloat.
On Saturday morning, SavingSweetBriar.com boasted $1.7 million in pledges, with a goal of $20 million.
It’s late in the year for Sweet Briar students to apply to transfer to other schools, even though some Virginia colleges have extended deadlines just for them. And high school seniors, who believed they would be moving into Sweet Briar dorms in August, received a rude introduction to the world of college admissions.
For a school that was on the verge of collapse, Sweet Briar certainly appeared healthy until the very end.
“I don’t think the alumnae and students are going to let Sweet Briar go quietly into that good night,” Crenshaw predicted.
Clearly, they are not. These Vixens are vexed.
