Says you

Readers have much to say about "One Hundred Girls for Every Boy," by Theresa Rusho.

Editor's note: Happily inundated with letters once again, this time about Theresa Rusho's essay, "One Gundred girls for Every Boy," we deliver a representative hunk of the mail.

Aug. 27, 2001 | As a fellow Wellesley alum, I can tell you that Theresa Rusho is suffering from a severe case of Wellesleyitis, characterized by lack of humor, the tendency to overanalyze and an obsession with gender issues. Believe me, we all get it, though some not as often as others. (Naval gazing and obsessing about gender issues should, after all, be part of the college experience.)

Really, I don't mean to knock Ms. Rusho's experience, but boy, was it different from mine. We didn't have very many men in our classes or our dorms, true. However, Wellesley has a strong relationship with MIT, including cross-listing, and when I was there, MIT was approximately 15 percent women. Consequently, only a bus ride away were hundreds of horny frat boys, quite a few oversexed geeks and some really cool, smart guys who were more than willing to discuss the nature of the universe, engage in some old-fashioned sexual shenanigans or preferably both.

The best thing, however, was that if we Wellesley women wanted to get away from the coed scene, we could. We were in control, and that was wonderful. I know those buses existed in the 1970s, perhaps Ms. Rusho should have hopped on one more often and had some fun.

-- Melissa Madden

It was such a pleasure to read Theresa Rusho's piece about women's colleges. My best friend and I met at Bryn Mawr College (imagine Wellesley, only half the size).

The conventional wisdom about women's colleges conflicted with our experience -- that the absence of men from classes and dorms magnified their importance. A few random Haverford boys at a party would generate far more excitement than they deserved. Our weekends were filled with books and boredom, not feminist bonding.

After one blissful evening at a nearby university -- just sushi, a movie and hanging out with a coed crowd -- I was overwhelmed by the envious realization that for my friends at Penn, the highlight of my semester was just an ordinary Wednesday.

My friend eventually transferred to Penn and I to Harvard, where we collected the kind of college memories that make their way into glossy viewbooks. Men became buddies, hallmates and co-editors, rather than the mysterious obsession they had been at Bryn Mawr. We still shake our heads when we read about how empowering and liberating women's colleges are supposed to be. That's why it was especially delightful to read Theresa's piece together and remember that our experience was far from unique.

-- Hanna Stotland, Bryn Mawr/Harvard '99

I completely identify with Ms. Rusho's experience in an all-female educational environment. I spent seven years in all-girls junior and senior high schools. I too was bookish, not very popular, and my experiences with boys occurred only during summer camp. I had my share of unrequited love, and yes, a few prank calls set up by the more vicious girls in my class.

When it came time for college, I determined that I had had enough of other women. However, I do credit my all-female learning environment during my formative years for the smidgen of self-respect and positive self-image that I did have at age 18. After all, I didn't have to compete with boys for attention or high marks in classes. Or compete with other girls for the popular boys. For that I am thankful.

Among my choices for college were Bryn Mawr, Vassar and a little-known technical school in California called Harvey Mudd. I determined that Bryn Mawr was too close to home (actually, it pretty much was home), Vassar was too concerned about letting everybody succeed, even if it took allowing some students in a class to take exams on their own time, or not to take written exams at all. Harvey Mudd, with its 1:4 female:male ratio seemed just right. It wasn't just that I developed a couple of crushes during my pre-frosh visit. It was also that this group of people were as bookish as I, and yet were really cool, and very nice to me even though I was "just a little kid" in their social hierarchy.

I never got the feeling on the other campuses that I would be accepted by anyone. I am too conservative, too anti-radical-feminist and too analytical. But at HMC, I felt that I was home within 15 minutes. Plus, I wouldn't have to deal with so much of the conniving pettiness of women in dormitory life. I had always had closer male friends anyway, so college was a blast for me. Yeah, there were a lot of keg parties, and public nudity of both sexes, but you know what? I wasn't oppressed, or smothered, or offended, or subjugated to a submissive role during any of that. Instead, my soul finally felt free.

-- Kristine Funkhouser Nowak

I do not discount Ms. Rusho's experiences at Wellesley, but as someone who graduated from the same school at around the same time, I had a widely different reaction to the college. I was extremely hesitant to attend a women's college for a number of reasons, not the least of which was that in high school almost all of my friends were male, but I quickly discovered that my fears had been unfounded. I learned about the strengths of women through my many wonderful female friends and I enjoyed my classes, single-sex and coed, with little differentiation between the two. Although I had certain friends who seemed mired in female-oriented polemic, my classes (I focused on art history, history, classics and history of religion, all of which could have been easily made into female-centered courses) were as diverse and as intense as at any highly ranked liberal arts college.

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