Alas, no more cashmere coats & pearls for Smithies!

A firestorm recently erupted over a letter written by a Smith College alumna, Anne Spurzem, whose brazen comments were a mix of bigotry, classism, snobbery, ignorance, inaccuracies, misinformation and outright nastiness that was directed at the admission policies of the college in recent years.

Smith College is part of the “Seven Sisters”, a group of liberal arts colleges that have been historically women’s colleges. The others are Barnard College, Bryn Mawr College, Mount Holyoke College, Radcliffe College, Vassar College, and Wellesley College. Radcliffe (which merged with Harvard College) and Vassar (which is now coeducational) are no longer women’s colleges.

Smith’s alumnae have included some eminent women including Gloria Steinam, Betty Friedan, Julia Child and Sylvia Plath. In fact, just last Sunday, Sharmeen Obaid Chinoy, a Pakistani who also went to Smith, won an Oscar for her documentary film, “Saving Face”.

Anne Spurzem’s letter to Smith College’s “Sophian” publication, is quoted verbatim below:

To the Editor,

I am the president of the Smith Club of Westchester County. I enjoy reading the Sophian online because it helps me stay abreast of developments at the school.

I read your article about [President] Carol [Christ]’s resignation and it had some interesting statistics. It mentioned the percentage increase in the population of women of color and foreign students. The gist of the article was that one of Carol’s objectives coming into the position was to increase diversity and the article gave statistics that showed that she did.

As someone who has followed admissions for many years, I can tell you how the school is viewed by students in Westchester and Fairfield Counties. First, these counties are some of the wealthiest in the country. The children have parents who are highly educated and accomplished and have high household incomes. The children are programmed from day one to get into Ivy League schools.

To this demographic, Smith is a safety school. Also, very few of these students want to go to a single sex school. With the exception of Wellesley, it is not hard to get into the Seven Sisters any more. The reason why Wellesley is more selective is because it is smaller than Smith and in a better geographic location – Boston beats Northampton.

The people who are attending Smith these days are A) lesbians or B) international students who get financial aid or C) low-income women of color who are the first generation in their family to go to college and will go to any school that gives them enough money. Carol emphasizes that this is one of her goals, and so that’s why the school needs more money for scholarships or D) white heterosexual girls who can’t get into Ivy League schools.

Smith no longer looks at SATs because if it did, it would have to report them to U.S. News & World Report. Low-income black and Hispanic students generally have lower SATs than whites or Asians of any income bracket. This is an acknowledged fact because they don’t have access to expensive prep classes or private tutors.

To accomplish [President Christ’s] mission of diversity, the school is underweighting SAT scores. This phenomenon has been widely discussed in the New York Times Education section. If you reduce your standards for grades and scores, you drop in the rankings, although you have accomplished a noble social objective. Smith has one of the highest diversity rates in the country.

I can tell you that the days of white, wealthy, upper-class students from prep schools in cashmere coats and pearls who marry Amherst men are over. This is unfortunate because it is this demographic that puts their name on buildings, donates great art and subsidizes scholarships.

-Anne Spurzem ’84

What started as a heated controversy sparked by Ms Spurzem’s letter mainly involving Smith’s current students, alumnae and a sprinkling of those who attended other colleges making up the Seven Sisters now shows signs of going viral.

My daughter, Saira, who went to Smith – class of ’91 – made me aware of Spurzem’s letter and the reaction to it at a website that was started specifically to invite comments about Spurzem’s inflammatory and outrageous letter. The site, Pearls & Cashmere, encouraged those commenting to include a picture preferably wearing cashmere and pearls to mock Spurzem’s rant about the days of cashmere coats and pearls having coming to an end – it got a host of responses!

The Sophian was so inundated with responses – some angry and others expressing dismay and sadness – it removed the letter and comments temporarily because of alleged deterioration in the performance of the website because of the increased traffic.

When I read Spurzem’s letter I was struck by the shallowness and superficiality of the arguments she presented. The irony is that the points she made regarding what may be arguably viewed as a lowering of standards by eliminating the need for SAT scores and the focus on diversity, was drowned out by the vapidity of the rest of her letter.

Some of her arguments were absurd and arrived at erroneous conclusions. In the absurd category is her sweeping statement that “the people who are attending Smith these days are A) lesbians or B) international students who get financial aid or C) low-income women of color who are the first generation in their family to go to college and will go to any school that gives them enough money………. or D) white heterosexual girls who can’t get into Ivy League schools.” She offers not one iota of support for this contention – the reality is that Smith has become more competitive than ever as have other highly regarded colleges.

Her statement that “low-income black and Hispanic students generally have lower SATs than whites or Asians of any income bracket….. is an acknowledged fact because they don’t have access to expensive prep classes or private tutors” flies in the face of studies showing that prep classes and private tutors have only a limited impact in increasing SAT scores. The WSJ published an article “SAT Coaching Found to Boost Scores — Barely” that addressed this specific issue. An excerpt from the article states: “The college counselors’ report concludes that, on average, prep courses yield only a modest benefit, ‘contrary to the claims made by many test-preparation providers.’ It found that SAT coaching resulted in about 30 points in score improvement on the SAT, out of a possible 1600”. Although the article was published in 2009 based on the old SAT test there is no evidence that the current SAT would produce significantly enhanced results by attending prep courses.

Spurzem who appears prone to making blanket statements continues: “As someone who has followed admissions for many years, I can tell you how the school is viewed by students in Westchester and Fairfield Counties. First, these counties are some of the wealthiest in the country. The children have parents who are highly educated and accomplished and have high household incomes. The children are programmed from day one to get into Ivy League schools. To this demographic, Smith is a safety school.”

Again, she offers zero support for her multiple statements about the preferences of these counties for whom she presumes to speak – two counties each with a population of approximately one million people! Perhaps, her viewpoint may be prevalent among the people with whom Spurzem interacts…. birds of feather and all …. but it is quite a leap to conclude that it is representative of the views of a couple of million people absent some evidence.

But Spurzem is not done; her sheer vapidity is apparent in her concluding comment “I can tell you that the days of white, wealthy, upper-class students from prep schools in cashmere coats and pearls who marry Amherst men are over”. Keep in mind that Spurzem graduated in ’84 and not ’54 when one of the goals of some women in going to college was to find an eligible husband.

My daughter and others rightly pointed out that they could not understand why someone like Spurzem would even choose to head up an alumnae association for Smith college given her contemptuous attitude to its current student population. After all, one of the objectives of such a group is to promote Smith College!

I was flabbergasted more by the sweeping statements she chose to make that could not withstand critical analysis. Her attempt to raise legitimate issues regarding the elimination of SAT scores as a required criteria for evaluating applicants and whether the focus on diversity results in lowered standards, was totally lost amidst the unfounded and nasty allegations she made in her letter. Frankly, her letter came across as a somewhat bigoted rant and an example of distorted values.

Spurzem’s comments about how the “children (of Westchester and Fairfield counties) are programmed from day one to get into Ivy League schools” reminded me of a mother’s comments on another website. This mother was obsessing non-stop about whether her daughter would get into one of the Ivies. Another parent responded that even if she did not there were excellent colleges besides the Ivies. This mother’s public response was that it was very important to her (the mother) to have a sticker from an Ivy in the rear window of her cars essentially to keep up with others in her social circle!

A parent commented on the Sophian that Spurzem’s letter demonstrated that whatever she gained from the Smith experience as a student was clearly overshadowed by other external influences in the 28 years subsequent to her graduation. How else does one explain a graduate from Smith having such a jaundiced view of that institution? As the father of a Smith alumna, who is an independent, intelligent and accomplished woman with a capacity for critical thinking and who has a record of significant accomplishment in her own right, a cashmere coat and pearls or marrying an Amherst graduate would be as far down the totem pole as it can get, as a yardstick for measuring success or achievement!

Spurzem could not have anticipated the uproar caused by her letter to the Sophian. She appears to be backtracking as is evident from comments here. Given the role of social media and the internet, an inflammatory letter based on faulty premises, plus a dose of bigotry and a mega-dose of a sense of entitlement, is bound to raise some hackles. It is not surprising that Spurzem has egg on her face – and deservedly so!

Tags: Anne Spurzem, Carol Christ's focus on diversity at Smith college, cashmere coats and pearls, diversity at Smith college, impact of prep courses on SAT scores, importance of Ivy League colleges in Westchester and Fairfield counties, Smith college, Sophia Smith