Wells College Closing at the End of Semester
It closes in one week.
Wells College, a former all-women’s college, told its students it will close at the end of the semester…in one week.
Hot Air’s Jazz Shaw wrote about it, mentioning his wife earned her B.A. there. Low enrollment and finances. Jazz’s wife stopped giving in 2004 when it ceased to be all-women’s:
However, that single-sex environment also meant that the school’s potential pool of applicants was cut in half. Also, an education at Wells was not cheap. They wound up competing against state schools in the region. Over the decades, they struggled. That appeared to change in 2004 when the school announced that it would begin accepting students of both genders. They actually included something about “gender not specified,” but that was before the word transgender became all the rage like it is today.
That was a bridge too far for many. My wife stopped donating money to Wells on the day the announcement came out and many of her fellow alumni did likewise. She didn’t see it as a “woke” move during that period. The school was just trying to drive up admissions and stabilize its financial situation. Apparently, the plan didn’t succeed. They managed to remain open for twenty more years, but now it’s over.
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That’s too bad, but it was also predictable. Fewer high school graduates are attending college these days, and private colleges that are not top-tier will be affected the most. Back in the day, Wells was a well-respected college.
The college was between a rock and a hard place. It needed to increase- or at least maintain- enrollment, but making it coed alienated alumnae from the previously all-women’s college.
oh alma mater, my alma mater…. to thee our songs we raise, to the we ever praise, my alma mater, dear alma mater.
At least I got a direct email this time. I *happened* to have Paul Harvey on the car radio – I was just about to turn it off – when he gave the news about the co-ed decision; I was floored. At least this time I got an email from the President about the closure.
I am unsurprised – you reported about Wells’ financial situation a few years ago, and like many, I no longer gave after the co-ed decision.
I went to an all girls high school… my choice… parents let us choose any private high school we wanted to attend. I actually think going to a single sex school at that stage of development was even more impactful than doing it at a college level. It was funny, somehow in college the all girls schools girls found each other… we were different.. more confident I think, more sure of who was a friend and who wasn’t and who we were. Just my thoughts…,
YES. Exactly. I would think it was way more impactful!
And “more confident I think, more sure of who was a friend and who wasn’t and who we were”
confident in who you were, who you are, and who you wanted to become.
Less susceptible to the “mean girl” power dynamics – not that didn’t happen at Wells… there were some who tried the “mean girl” act, but without an audience (of guys or weak girls), it didn’t go very far. Mostly we ignored their antics
I say the same to you as I did the other poster:
but never mentioned is the competition in the academic sense without males being present
which then plays into the (hopes) that women are not as competitive or mean spirited etc etc as men
which we of course know is not even close to being the truth
but never mentioned is the competition in the academic sense without males being present
which then plays into the (hopes) that women are not as competitive or mean spirited etc etc as men
which we of course know is not even close to being the truth
Feminists going to blame this on patriarchy, right?
Since last year small colleges have been closing at a rate of two per months. Sadly, more to follow.
Schools like these are ideal for a lot of students who’d be lost at Enormous State U. But the economics are no longer there.
My cousin went there. Beautiful campus and location. Just up the road from Cornell and Ithaca College. I hope somebody finds something good to do with the buildings.
“Migrant” housing… gotta shelter all those illegals, ya know….
He said something GOOD.
soon to be reopened as a
“daycare center” 🙂
then what was it???
“That was a bridge too far for many. My wife stopped donating money to Wells on the day the announcement came out and many of her fellow alumni did likewise. She didn’t see it as a “woke” move during that period”
it was a “woke” move AND THERE IS NOTHING WRONG WITH THAT
AS IT DID NOT MEET THE REQUIREMENTS SHE EXPECTED
nothing wrong with that
but it would be interesting to understand why she objected to men being there
( I have a few ideas of my own on why)
As an Alumna, I can tell you why we stopped donating when we went co-ed.
1) there was a feeling of betrayal. As I said above, I heard about it on accident when Paul Harvey was finishing up a news segment. No one had given us a heads-up, or an email. We found out on the news. Why does this matter? Because of
2) Wells has had a long history of fostering a Sisterhood. It didn’t matter what year you graduated, once you had your onyx ring, you had sisters all over the world. We had no sororities on campus because the whole college was a giant sorority (of sorts). I do not even LIKE most of my classmates, but I would drop everything to pray for any one of them if needed; I love them.
3) on campus, it was so SAFE. I cannot overstate how SAFE campus was in the 90s. Very few people locked their dorm doors, we wandered around way after dark (although we could call Security for rides if we felt unsafe, and they were used as a taxi service after dark mostly cuz we didn’t like walking in the cold), we fall asleep in random academic buildings (the security guard saw me one night, turned off the lights, and locked up the building… I called for a ride home a few hours later and he laughed knowing I would be calling). Are all men predators? no, absolutely not, but that SAFETY was invaluable.
4) Not just physical safety, but emotional and mental safety as well. I did not know before I was in a single-sex environment how much I held back or showed off for guys. Suddenly, I was not in competition with other girls for the guys – and for the first time in my life I understood how to have female friends. Seems basic, but it was a paradigm changer for a lot of us.
5) It felt like a betrayal to the mission of the College. When Henry Wells founded it, he chose that location on purpose, close to the college recently founded by his good friend Ezra Cornell. But far enough away that we had distance. And Henry refused “Sister” status for us, Cornell’s Sister school was Elmira IIRC. Henry wanted us to be independent. He wanted highly-educated women who could hold their own. And he got us.
6) the final reason, I think, is that we just no longer felt like it was OUR college. Our HOME. There is a feeling when you round that final hill on Rt. 90 of Home. No matter how long you have been gone, Wells was home. And even though guys had always been on campus (thank you Walls – below) and in some classes and we loved our male profs, Suddenly Wells no longer felt like Home.
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I do not think it was a “woke” move to go co-ed – I think it was a financial decision. I am not nor have I ever been privy to the financial dealings of the college, but things have felt mis-managed for decades, since I was there at least.
Well put. A close friend attended her 50th reunion there not that long ago. She was sad but saw it coming. Note that, if I remember correctly, Pleasant Rowland of Pleasant Company (American Girl dolls), an alum, put a lot of money into the school to try to help it stay afloat. Absent that, it might have closed sooner.
true that.
thanks for the well thought out response
and I am nottt in disagreement with you
humans are prone to a natural segregation vs an authoritarian dictate of whom to associate with via a forced community
so how would you extrapolate this all out? in so far as housing and schools etc
for me I dont believe in publicly funded schools and housing should be no tax subsidies etc
if you can afford to live their ,,race or gender doesnt matter
so do you feel safer where you live if its 100% female? all one race etc?
My thoughts having attended a single-sex education.
I was boy-crazy in high school – beyond, really. Almost everything I did, I did knowing that guys were watching. Attending Wells was a choice I made IN SPITE of the women-only (and Cornell was just down the road, close enough for all the testosterone I could want).
Personally – I think most if not all schools should be single-sex from grades 6-9. During those crazy hormone filled years, academics takes a backseat to hormones. Not a single-sex everywhere lifestyle, but for core academics, oh yeah!
I do not necessarily feel safer in a single-sex, single race area. But for that time of life, when so many young people are drunk every weekend, and they are stressed from finals and papers, yeah, I think that female-only was a safer place to be, if only safer from the consequences of our own bad choices.
And, knowing that if I only managed to roll out of bed and into class, barely brushing my teeth, it was okay – everyone understood; and as long as it wasn’t a constant thing, no one cared. We could be silly, we could be dumb, we could philosophize late into the night, we could sing dumb songs, and dance around the Sycamore…. and it was just something dumb you did with your sisters. No judgement. Add in guys – and that changes.
thanks
take care
What can I say…
Just today, I received an e-mail from my high school celebrating 40 years of accepting female students.
When I attended, many more than 40 years ago, it was an all-boys school. So much so as to have been entirely unreasonable about it:
“Why don’t you allow freshmen students to attend the dances?”
“What? You’re welcome at all the dances, they’re open to you!”
“But you don’t allow us to bring freshmen girls into the dances as our dates!”
“So? You can still come to the dance and have fun!”
DIdn’t make any sense to me then — still doesn’t.
Even as an upperclassman, meeting such girls was a challenge, especially when you didn’t frequent other (coed) high schools or drive. Socially, it was a very suck, very repressive teen experience.
But then they announced they were accepting girls. It was well understood to be a response to financial shortfalls.
The student body of the past 40 years has had a much more natural adolescent environment than was allowed us. Furthermore, it actually improved their financial situation, so win-win.
And by all accounts the girls must be insufficiently stuck-up, to the point of actually paying to go to the same school as the boys, and apparently enjoying it.
but it did open up new issues as even “morning sunshine” pointed out with her experiences
showing off etc
the goal of the segregated school would be mainly to limit distractions
and as we can see now with the “discovery” of “new’ genders learning math science writing etc is barley a reason to get an education anymore
As a Cornellian in the 1970’s, I remember going to Wells some Saturday, waking up in some girl’s empty room on Sunday morning, and hitching a ride back to Ithaca. And that’s all I remember:). It was a pretty campus on the lake.
I was a Cornelian in the 1950s. Went to an all-boys K-12 and was literally afraid of the girls at Cornell. The Wells girls were much more tolerant but I never overnighted there. Had several harrowing midnight rides down the lake shore back home. Good memories.
Wells went coed in 2005. Going coed helped the enrollment, for 10-15 years. The endowment was only $24 million. I do not know the effect that going coed had on alumnae contributions, but from comments here it is apparent that going coed had some effect.
Here are some enrollment statistics cobbled from various web sources
Going coed worked for a while. From 2007 :
My mother went to a women’s state college (OCW) in Oklahoma. She was indifferent to its later going coed.