Last week I opened an interesting email from Deborah Spar, the president of Barnard College, my alma mater. Spar frequently sends email blasts to alumnae, so it's not as if she was personally contacting me to see how I was or gauge my thoughts on, say, last week's episode of Parks and Recreation (Knope 2012!). She was communicating some pretty great news: President Obama is giving the commencement address to the graduating class of 2012.
I was really excited to read this. I can't actually attend the ceremony, as I am not friends with a graduating senior, and the ceremony on Barnard's campus is a private, intimate affair compared with the grand festivities that comprise the Columbia University graduation taking place the day after. Not knocking it. That graduation was a big crazy funfest and I enjoyed every. Damn. Minute. But I also remember and cherish the Barnard Ceremony. It's a smallish school, and each department gets to stand and be recognized, and you can actually see everyone's faces. It was a terrific day and I've got great memories of it. So reading that Barnard was going to be hosting Obama made me proud and happy for this class. He chose Barnard specifically because it is personally and politically symbolic to him. His sister attended Barnard, and he attended Columbia across the street. And giving the address at Barnard dovetails with Obama's mission to support opportunities for female leadership (anybody else feel like this President actually believes that women are people?). What a legacy. What an opportunity. What a great statement about how important women's education is.
But the days following this historic announcement witnessed a stream of jealousy, resentment, and misogynist vitriol spewing forth (mostly in the form of comments on blogs) from across the street and around the globe: Columbia students and alums, largely, as well as others disparaged Obama's choice with harsh and hatefully chosen words, creating a media-supported Barnard Backlash. The NY Times touched upon this trend, with University Presidents Spar and Lee Bollinger (of Columbia) coming off as rather dismissive of the reaction. Chalking it up to a kind of "Kids will be kids" take on it, they cited some long-term rivalry between Barnard and Columbia students regarding levels of difficulty in classes, access to resources, etc. They didn't specifically address some of the actual comments, which the blog jezebel.com did. I won't retype them, because they are truly disgusting, but more than once the word "feminazi" gets tossed around (Oooh burn. Also, how original!), and some of the old tried and not-so-true assumptions about Barnard students lacking A) brains, B) a moral compass, and C) ambitions other than marrying a Columbia man have reared their ugly heads in bolder and uglier fashion than I remember encountering as an undergrad. (This is back when blogging wasn't as common, and maybe this is my rose-tinted view of the past, but perhaps people thought twice about submitting nasty comments online, if only because it was a new-ish forum for opinions.) Other lowest-common-denominator insults included the assertion that Barnard women are semen receptacles (you figure it out), should shut their pie-holes (pie wasn't always the object implied to be taking up space in the hole), and should major in something other than "Home Economics" at "Barnyard" College. (Ah. That old chestnut: Barnyard. Really? REALLY?!)
As a Barnard alum, I feel like I can weigh in on this debate. I attended Barnard not thinking I'd get my "MRS" like so many of these Columbia students - and more dishearteningly, Columbia women - assume, but rather thinking that my social life would likely take a hit because I'd be at a women's college. I attended a co-ed high school, and I wasn't exactly batting 1000 with the fellas at that point anyway. So I looked ahead at the potentially socially awkward next four years with a big fat shrug and an "Oh, well" because I would be attending a terrific school that I never thought I'd be smart enough to attend. And boys? Eh - there'd be time enough for that, hopefully. So I dove into those four years, getting a B.A. in Anthropology - a field heavily influenced by Barnard scholarship - and not Home Economics, making superb friends, and learning as much as my TINY LADYBRAIN could stand. For my Anthro major, I took half of my classes at Columbia. I also took half my classes for other requirements, like language and math, and my brief love affair with Art History. And guess what? You can tell the Barnard classes from the Columbia ones on my transcripts because my grades in Columbia classes were almost always half or a full letter grade higher than my Barnard classes.
Because Columbia classes were easier.
That's right. Barnard classes were harder. For this alum, anyway. All my English classes, (I flirted with majoring in English. Do you see how all my romantic metaphors involve academic subjects? Yeah, that was my love life in college) my seminars, (not semen-ars) and my thesis group were Barnard, and they were intense - INTENSE - challenges that made me a harder worker, a better student and a thinker, and taught me how to get. It. DONE.
Not every alumna shares this passionate view of Barnard, but I'd be remiss if I didn't speak up and throw in my two cents when the opposing viewpoint is coming into this discourse with megaphones and sacks of rolled-up-quarters.
I can understand a little jealousy that Barnard's getting Barack to speak and Columbia isn't. But really, when you see the misogyny and outright hate speech that has erupted over his choice, well, it doesn't take a diploma in Barnyard Home Economics to see that not only did he make the right call to visit a women's college and stand on the side of women's education, he made the necessary one.
