Wellesley Underground

my favorite response by a fellow wellesley ‘09er: 

“All women—at both coed and women’s colleges—must seek to empower themselves by challenging gender inequities. The first step is not to whine about these inequalities, but to deal directly with the men who impose them upon us. There is still a Real World, and it’s been easier to learn how to contend with it and with men at Wesleyan than at a women’s college.”

Pontificate all you want about hypotheticals, but the fact is that Wellesley graduates a disproportionate number of women in top positions in corporate America, which is still very much male-dominated. Wellesley has also graduated more female directors of Fortune 500 companies than any other college in the country (in case you missed the point, that includes Wesleyan) and many of those highly successful women credit the single-sex environment as an element of their success. Who’s doing more to “empower” and “contend”? 

If we’re going to go all anecdotal in lieu of using actual data, I’d just say that my four years at Wellesley were absolutely fantastic, surrounded by women who sometimes were the only females to speak up during co-ed classes at MIT, were used to seizing what they wanted because ambition wasn’t seen as “bitchy” or “unfeminine”, and who were and are fiercely, fiercely loyal to their school and their sisters. 

I’m sorry Bryn Mawr didn’t work out for you, but by your own admission you have no direct experience with Wellesley, choosing instead to make ludicrous cliches and misuse the word “literally”. I respect your choice to prefer co-ed; it’s my opinion as a Wellesley alum to say that (1) this is a poorly-written piece that reads as self-validation, (2) perhaps you should graduate first before making grand statements about “Real Life”, and (3) it’s downright stupid to write about something that you know nothing about beyond a single point of similarity. 

-Linda “I chose Wellesley and didn’t even apply to Wesleyan” Yan

(via rovaira)